Carl Weber's Kingpins (17 page)

“Damn,” Day said.

“Yeah,” Mac told her. “That’s why I gotta keep that little nigga alive for two more days.”

“Please don’t let nothin’ happen to my brother. He at the house by himself?”

“Nah.” Mac shook his head. “His lovesick ass is there with that girl. But I think it’s a good thing with all the shit going on around us. I done seen a lot of shit in my days, but this? Never.”

“Yeah, I . . .” Suddenly it seemed like a light bulb went off over her head. “You said he at the house with Indigo?”

Her mind was going a mile a minute. She remembered the last night she was at Mac’s house and how she had gone upstairs by herself. That night was a blur, but she remembered Indigo coming up the stairs behind her. She remembered getting drunk and mentioning to her some of the things she had done in her past; but she didn’t know if she had told her about what she did to Antonio.

“Do you know her last name?”

“No, why?”

“Because that night I was at your house I think I might have let too much slip to her about this whole thing,” she said. “And whenever something happened she was right there. I don’t know, maybe I’m tripping.”

“You know, when I first saw her I thought she looked familiar, but I can’t place her fa—” His eyes got big out of nowhere. “Oh, shit.”

“What?”

“I have to go! I know who it is. I have to go.” He stood up but Day caught his arm.

“What’s going on?”

“Day, I have to go,” Mac said urgently. “He’s about to die.”

David Jr. let the water run down his body in the shower and he flexed his muscles. Indigo had showered ahead of him and he got in as soon as she got out. He’d given her a pair of his basketball shorts and a T-shirt for when she decided to go out and grab her own clothes. After he got done rinsing himself off, he got out and wrapped a white towel just below his navel. He grabbed the toothbrush that the security had gone to the store and grabbed for him so he could brush his teeth. The last thing he wanted to do was be talking all in Indigo’s face with stinky breath.

He looked at himself in the mirror and took notice that he needed a touch-up on his fade. The diamonds in his ears gleamed in the light and he licked his lips, much like LL Cool J did. He put on a pair of Nike basketball sweats with the matching T-shirt and socks before he stepped out of the bathroom.

As soon as he took the first step out of the bathroom on the upper part of the house, he saw that the light in the hallway was out. He was sure that he had turned it on before he got in the shower.

“Hello?” he called out, thinking that Indigo was playing a trick on him. “Indigo?”

There was a loud shattering sound on the floor below him, followed by a spine-tingling scream.

“Indigo!” he shouted, and took off toward the stairs in the pitch-black darkness. “Indigo!”

“David! Hel . . . Ahhhhhhh!”

David didn’t remember a time in his life that he ran faster than he did at that moment. The whole house was quiet and he didn’t see any of the security guards. He didn’t pay that any attention, however. His only focus was getting to Indigo before something happened to her. The scream had come from the dining room.

“Indigo!” David shouted, using his hands to feel on the walls for a light switch. When he found one he flipped it on, but nothing happened. The house stayed dark. “Indigo!”

“Right here,” a low voice said in the dark.

He turned around, but it was too late. Something hard and heavy came crashing down on his temple, knocking him out cold.

* * *

When David Jr. finally came to, his chin was on his chest and his body was lurched forward slightly. His head was throbbing and he tried to open his eyes, but even the dim light that lit the room he was in pained them. Everything around him was a blur and it seemed like the room was spinning. He tried to move his arms but soon he realized that he was bound to a chair, both his arms and his legs.

Glancing around, he realized that he was in a place that he recognized. The chair that he was tied to was in the living room of his family’s cabin. He hadn’t been there in years but he saw hanging from the walls pictures of him and Day, and he knew that he was right. In the room beside him he could hear somebody mumbling, but he had to strain his ears so that he could make out the words. It was the strangest thing he had ever witnessed. He could tell that it was one voice speaking; however, the voice kept changing timbre, almost like there were two people in the room.

“Kill him now. Kill him now.”

“No! I can’t. He said he loves me.”

“He will never love you! You killed his parents.”

“No, he loves me. I know he does.”

“Stupid bitch. You haven’t even dated him for two weeks yet. How can he love you?”

“Shut up! Just shut up!”

“In . . . Indigo?” David Jr. called out. “Indigo, is that you?”

He saw her shadow first before her small frame entered the room. She was dressed in all black and in her hand she carried a big butcher knife. “David Jr., honey, you’re awake!” She moved her feet quickly and bent over him to examine the gash on his head. “Damn, that looks like it hurts!”

She touched it and he jumped slightly at the sting. “Oh, I’m sorry. Does it hurt?” She giggled.

“Yo, what’s going on, Indigo? If this is your idea of being kinky I’m not with it at all.”

“Shut up!” she yelled in his face with a voice that he’d never heard her use before; but then she put her fingers to her lips like she’d made an accident. “Oops, sorry. I didn’t mean that, David Jr., really I didn’t.”

“What’s going on, Indigo? Why are you doing this?”

“Because I have to,” Indigo said calmly, and grabbed a wooden chair so that she could sit directly in front of him. She set the knife on her lap and let her eyes travel over his face. “I must say, you and your sister highly favor your father. You look just like he did when I tied him to the that chair in his office.”

Her words played over and over in David Jr.’s head until he finally understood. “It was you. It’s been you this whole time.”

It dawned on him then that the only time things didn’t happen were when she was around and out in the open with him and his family. Whoever had planted the car bomb had to have already been on the property; when the note was left on Mac’s front door she showed up to kick it with David Jr. moments later. It all made sense and he couldn’t believe that he didn’t get it until just then.

“Ding ding ding! Do you want a cookie for finally solving the mystery?”

“But why?”

She belted out a crazed laugh and threw her head back. Her hair was disheveled and out of the ponytail that it was in earlier. The look she had in her eyes was one of a crazed woman who was out for blood and vengeance.

“But why?” She grabbed the knife, and with a swift motion she sliced his chest and he shouted out in pain.

“Tell him why, Indy.”

“Shut up! I’m about to!” She stood up and paced back and forth in front of David on top of the bearskin rug. She gripped the sides of her head and mumbled words to herself. “You want to know why I did it, David Jr.? Huh? Because your father was a monster! He was like a disease that infected everybody he came into contact with.”

“What did he do to you?” David Jr. panted. He looked down and saw that his white shirt was already heavily stained from the gash she had just given him.

“He ruined my life!” Indigo shouted. “He took away everything that I ever loved! Look at me! Look at me, David Jr. Who do you see?”

David Jr. tried to focus on her face but, with the blood he was losing mixed with the aching on his head, he just couldn’t. She was a blur.

“I don’t know, Indigo. I don’t know.”

“My real name is Indigo Donna Chambers. I was named after my father. Donovan Chambers.”

“You’re . . . you’re Donovan’s daughter?”

“That’s what the fuck I said, isn’t it?” She swung the knife again and sliced open his upper arm. He fought against his restraints and tried to eat the pain that he was feeling. “Your father had my father killed in this very same cabin. His men sent his head in a box to my mother and me. In a fucking box! When he was murdered we lost everything. We didn’t have a dime to our names because your father cleared out his accounts. I got kicked out of school and my mother stopped being able to get my medication. One night I had one of my . . . episodes and she wasn’t able to calm me down.”

“What happened to her?”

“I killed her, duh.” Indigo giggled and shrugged her shoulders like the answer was just that obvious. “She shouldn’t have gotten in the way of the knife.”

“You’re sick,” he panted.

“Hmm, maybe. Anyways, after I killed her I vowed to make all of you hurt the way you have made me hurt. My whole life fell apart the day your father killed my daddy! Over some money? Over money! Like he didn’t have enough of that already! So before our date I followed him to Club Low and caught him slipping from behind, literally. I put the bomb in Day’s car that day I was visiting, you know, when I had excused myself to the bathroom. It was so unfortunate that it was your mother who got blown up. I was actually going to let her live, too, sad story. Then there was Day. She was so sad that night in Mac’s basement. I went upstairs to comfort her and the alcohol made her let slip where she had hidden this body. Told me that the feds were investigating her on a case and, well, you know the rest.”

“Crazy bitch.”

She grew stiff and looked down at him. The psychotic look never left her eyes and she swung the knife with all her might back and forth on his body and sliced him at whatever spot was open. Blood dripped from the tip of the knife and she stood there panting. She didn’t like the fact that he wasn’t screaming. He shouted and flinched at the pain, but he didn’t scream.

“You’re a tough cookie, aren’t you? It’s okay, though. After about twenty minutes your old man cracked too. Maybe I just need to get the brass knuckles. I’ll be riiiight back.”

* * *

When Mac reached his home the first thing he saw were the bodies of his security dead on the ground all around his home. After seeing that, he instantly ran inside yelling for David Jr., even though he knew he wasn’t going to answer. The power in the whole house had been cut off and David Jr. was nowhere in sight. Neither was Indigo. He exited the house almost as fast as he had entered it and he jumped back in his vehicle.

He could shoot himself in the foot at how naïve he had been. He knew he had recognized her face when he had first seen her in the bar with David Jr. At the time, he couldn’t put a finger on it, but after talking to Day he finally understood. The day he had followed King David’s orders and killed Donovan Chambers, he took him to King David’s cabin in the woods, as instructed. As they beat him to a bloody pulp Mac remembered in the back of his mind Donovan mumbling something about somebody named Indigo needing her medicine. He begged them to get her the medicine she needed but they all laughed at him. Mac just thought he was talking crazy because his brain had been shaken up. He wished he would have paid attention because he would have known who was behind all of the murders and setups a long time ago.

He thought about the things they did to Donovan, the sick, sadistic things they did to him. They tormented him for hours before cutting off his head. They even mailed it home to his family with a note so they would know why he wasn’t coming home. Never in his right mind would he have guessed it would have backfired on him the way that it had. Sitting in his car, he thought back to that cabin and wished that he would have done things differently.

“The cabin,” he said out loud.

He pressed on the gas and floored it, hoping that his guess was the right one. If not, then David Jr. was a dead man.

“David Jrrrrrrr.!” A singsong voice said right before he felt cold water being dumped on his face. Immediately he was snapped back into consciousness. “Wakey wakey!”

The moment that David Jr. woke up, the pain to his body came back instantly. His jaw felt like it was broken and his right eye was swollen shut.

“Don’t,” David Jr. whispered when she drew her fist back to punch him again. “What do you want? I’ll give you anything.” The last thing he wanted to do was beg for his life, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He felt like the writer who had gotten kidnapped in the movie
Misery.
All he could think of was his sister. He didn’t want to leave her in the world alone. He fought the urge to nod off again, and forced his head up straight. “Do you want money? I’ll give you however much you want. You’ll be able to get your medicine. You’ll be able to go back to school.”

Indigo looked at him and chuckled at his attempt to save his own life. “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Bargaining won’t work with me. I won’t be satisfied until you are dead too. Plus, I’ll have access to all of your money once you’re gone anyway.” She grinned sinisterly and took the brass knuckles off of her hand and placed them on the chair that she had been sitting in. From it she grabbed the stained butcher’s knife again. “I’ll stop toying with you now. I’m ready to feel the pressure on this knife when I plunge it into your gut.”

She put her hand on his elbow to steady him, and he was too weak to try to wobble around in the chair.

“This will only hurt a lot,” she said, and yanked her elbow back to drive the knife in his stomach.

Bang! Bang!

Two shots rang out in the cabin and Indigo’s body jerked. Her grip around the knife loosened and it dropped on the floor next to the chair David Jr. was tied to. She fell into him and clutched his shoulders and looked square into his eyes as hers went dim. Blood spilled from her mouth as she tried to talk.

“Da . . . David Jr., I . . .”

Bang!

That time the bullet went through her back and struck her confused heart. She died on impact without finishing her statement. David Jr. looked up and saw Mac bending over with his hands on his knees, panting. He looked at the shape that David Jr. was in and knew that if he had gotten there a moment later he would have been a dead man. He rushed over to where he was bound to the chair, and threw Indigo’s lifeless body to the side.

“Crazy-ass bitch,” he said and spat down on her. He then wrapped his arms around David Jr., not caring about all of the blood. “Come on. Let’s get you to the hospital.”

Mac used the butcher’s knife to cut David Jr. free and he almost fell to the floor. He had lost so much blood and was so weak that he had little to no control over his body. Mac hoisted David Jr. up over his back. He thought back to the day that he almost got killed and King David had carried him to the car in that very same manner. He felt like he was paying homage to his best friend by making sure his son lived.

Mac strapped David Jr. in the car and pulled his phone out of his pocket. He made a phone call, and let his people know that they would need a cleanup team at the Mason family cabin, before he got back in the car to get David Jr. to the hospital. He hoped he wasn’t bruised up too badly because Saturday was around the corner.

“Mac,” David Jr. said before he nodded off in the passenger’s seat.

“What’s up, son?” Mac asked, pulling off from the site where the biggest tragedy almost had taken place.

“Don’t let me fuck with no more light-skinned bitches.”