Pure Hate (20 page)

“I’m looking for Rick. I’m a friend of his . . .”

“I know who you are, Reed. I remember when you used to come ’round
here with that devilish nigga, Malcolm. I didn’t want Ricky hangin’ out with
either one of you. I saw the way you got off on slummin’ with Malcolm, how you
fed off that nigga’s evil. I heard about how that evil came back at you. I
heard about what happened to your family.” Her eyes bore down on him full of
accusation and not a shred of pity. “Now you comin’ around here lookin’ for
Ricky. For what? So you can find Malcolm and get yourself killed, too? You should’ve
never come around here in the first place. Should’ve stayed up there with the
rest of the white folks.”

“Ma’am please, is Rick here? I just need to talk to him and
then I’ll be gone.” Reed was struck by the irony of his words. They sounded
exactly like what Detective Baltimore had said to him.

“Rick ain’t here. He moved out years ago, right after
college when he got married.”

College?
Married?
That didn’t sound like the Rick he had known.

“Where did he move?”

“You’re a fool if you go after him.
You know Malcolm will kill you.”

Reed knew. The voice in his head was
telling him the exact same thing.

You’re going to die, white boy!

“Please Mrs. Brown.”

“South Philly. He moved to South
Philly.”

She gave him the address and watched
him turn to walk back to his car. He had shoved the Glock down the back of his
jeans and the butt of the pistol was sticking out from under his shirt.

“Rest in peace,” the old woman said
solemnly at Reed’s back.

Reed cringed. Even with the gun, he
knew he was a dead man if he managed to catch up with Malcolm. It was like a
caterpillar hunting a preying mantis. Prey stalking predator.

The drive to South Philly was a blur.
Reed was on autopilot, taking the hairpin turns on Lincoln Drive at lethal
velocity without thinking. His mind was on Malcolm and the very real threat he
would pose when they met face to face. Reed was no killer but he had to try.
Malcolm was.

The Taurus wagon’s steel belted
radials squealed in anguish as they burned across asphalt, leaving long skid
marks on the road. Reed stomped down hard on the breaks and fought to keep the
wagon from slamming into the meridian.

I’ve got to slow down,
Reed thought.

There was plenty of time for him to
die. No need to rush things. He flew down Kelly Drive, past the art museum, and
down the parkway. He had no choice but to slow down now. He was approaching
Center City. There would be cops.

Cops out to stop him from getting to
Malcolm.

Thoughts of Malcolm turned to
thoughts of his dead family. He remembered how he’d yelled at Mark and Jennie
for cursing. The last words he’d spoken to them had been words of anger. Over
and over, he rehearsed alternative ways he could have handled the situation.

If only he’d known. He would have
held them, told them he loved them, played Crash Bandicoot with Mark and
whipped Jennie in Duke Nuke’em. He thought about all the times he hadn’t told
Linda he loved her because he was too tired, and his novel wasn’t going right
and he just wanted to lay down and shut out the world. He even thought about
the times when he had ejaculated too quickly even though he knew he could’ve
held back and waited for Linda to orgasm. But he’d been tired and selfish and
now she was gone and making love to her, holding her, telling her he loved her,
were the only things in the world he wanted to do . . . besides pulling
Malcolm’s heart out of his chest and stuffing it down his throat.

He turned onto Eleventh Street and
fought to keep the wagon below thirty-five miles an hour. When he passed
Catherine Street, he could hardly look at the huge, four-story, red brick
institution where he, Malcolm, Renee’ and Natasha began their fatal courtship.
In his stomach, thousands of huge Monarch butterflies began their migration.
His hands were shaking again. He was almost there.

The street on which Rick lived looked
surprisingly affluent. As affluent as South Philadelphia got anyway. Manicured
lawns were creatively landscaped with trees and shrubs. Some even had stone
fountains on the front lawn. The houses all looked as if they’d been recently
painted and they even had garages, an almost unheard of feature for a home in
Philadelphia, least of all South Philly. Further down the block, the houses
regressed back into the claustrophobic row homes that, no matter how well
maintained, still looked like the immigrant ghetto it had been when the
Italians, Jews, and Irish first came over the bridges from New York and New
Jersey after their initial landing at Ellis Island. It wasn’t depressing like a
black or Latino Ghetto. In fact, you could almost call it quaint, but Reed
couldn’t help noticing how much these homes resembled the houses in Germantown
and North Philadelphia, but were just better maintained.

Reed checked the address he’d written
down and pulled up in front of a house that was almost a carbon copy of
Malcolm’s house on Ambrose Street. He kept driving further down the block,
thinking it might be safer and less conspicuous to approach on foot. He
double-parked the wagon and left the motor running. He hoped that Rick’s wife
wasn’t home because there was a new voice in his head; it sounded like little
Jennie and it was screaming for revenge. An eye for an eye. A life for a life.
A wife for a wife.

Kill
him, Daddy. Kill the bad man.

Reed cringed and
fought back tears, squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his teeth as Jennie
pleaded with him
.

He
hurt us, Daddy. He hurt me and Mommy and Mark. He hurt us real bad. Kill him,
Daddy. Kill him. Kill his friends. Kill them all. Make those motherfuckers pay!
An eye for an eye, Daddy. An eye for an eye!

Jennie still talked too much and
cursed too much, but Reed was in no mood to scold her. Even in her fury, it was
good to hear her voice. He could hear Linda as well, cool, calm, humanitarian,
pacifist, vegetarian for ethical reasons, echoing Jennie’s wrath and screaming
for Malcolm’s blood. Death seemed to have changed her political outlook.

He
has to die, Reed. You know what you have to do. He hurt us, Reed. Kill him!
Kill that FUCKING NIGGER!

The cacophony continued in Reed’s
head as he walked up the street toward Rick’s house. A wild, nervous energy
seemed to be vibrating through him. His face was a riot of ticks and twitches.
Restless ghosts raged and stormed through his fragmented mind. He tried to
quiet the voices by pressing his hands over his ears and closing his eyes. He
stood on the sidewalk for nearly a full minute with his hands cupped to the
sides of his head. It felt like his brain was flying apart. He knew what he
needed to do, the only way to quiet the ghosts. Find Malcolm. Kill Malcolm.

Reed knew he was going insane. He
surprised himself with how easy the idea was to accept. His sanity had been
severed cleanly. It hadn’t shattered. It had simply snapped like the stem of a
dandelion in a harsh wind. Now he had the voices. The voices of the vengeful
dead. He didn’t mind. As long as the voices were there, he wasn’t alone. He had
his family. But now he needed to focus and it was hard with the voices nagging
him. Reed reached into his waistband and closed his hand around the Glock.
Feeling its cold, deadly, weight seemed to calm him. Suddenly his head was
clear again. Quiet. He was ready.

Malcolm showed up unexpectedly at
Rick’s door. He needed a place to lay low. He knew that Rick was married, but
that didn’t matter. Bros before hoes. That was law.

“What up, my nigga?” Malcolm slipped
easily back into the lingo of the streets. It was as familiar to him as
breathing.

“Malcolm! What’s up, dog? I ain’t
seen your black ass in years. Man, you all over the news. Them cops want your
ass bad!”

“That’s why I’m here. I need to stay
with you for a while.”

Rick’s eyes slid sideways back toward
the house then swept the floor. He looked nervous.

“Is that gonna be a problem, nigga?
You still my nigga, ain’t you?”

“Yeah, Malcolm. You know I got your
back. It’s just that I got a woman . . . a wife, and this shit you involved in .
. . .”

Malcolm leaned closer until his face
was inches from Rick’s.

“Are you my dog or are you your
bitch’s bitch?”

Rick had lost a little of his
craziness. It showed in his clean, white Hanes underwear and terrycloth house
coat, his neatly groomed hair and, most telling, the can of Bud Light clutched
in his right hand instead of the forty of malt liquor that had once been
permanently attached to his palm. Along with his insanity, he’d lost the
quality Malcolm had most admired in the man, his fearlessness. There was a time
when Malcolm saw in Rick something to be feared, a little nigga who didn’t give
a fuck. Now, marriage, college, and comfortable living had softened him. He
wasn’t street no more. He was still ghetto, that you can’t escape, but now he
was soft pillows, cable TV, recliners and house slippers. He was domesticated.
Weak.

Malcolm sneered in disgust, the fangs
making the expression twice as menacing. If the man didn’t remember where he
came from real quick, Malcolm would have to turn Rick’s crisp, new, white
T-shirt all red.

“You know I’m your dog, Malcolm.”

“Yeah. I know, Rick. I know.” Malcolm
slipped past him into the house, carrying a garment bag filled with expensive
designer suits from Giorgio Armani, Hugo Boss, and Gianni Versace.

“So, where is your woman?”

Malcolm laughed out loud when he saw
Rick flinch and shudder in horror.

“Don’t worry, nigga. I’m not gonna
hurt her. I just want to meet her. I mean, since we are going to be roommates
for a while.”

Rick’s shoulders slumped. His face
hung with the defeated look of a whipped dog. If Malcolm still cared for the
man, he would’ve killed him for that just to put him out of his misery.

“She’s upstairs asleep. She works at
night.”

“Alright, I’m gonna drop my shit
here. Then you and me are gonna go on a little mission.”

“What’s up?”

Malcolm smiled carnivorously, baring
his fangs in a ghastly expression somewhere between pleasure and naked
aggression.

“Did you know that Natasha lived
around here somewhere?”

This time Rick did smile, that old goofy smile
with the tip of his tongue sticking out from between his teeth like a hyena.
His eyes began to gleam with a kind of lust. Perhaps he hadn’t changed as much
as Malcolm had first suspected. He still had his old taste for violence,
especially when it carried a sexual component.

Rick shrugged into a thick, black, goose down
jacket with
South Pole
emblazoned across the front in two-inch high,
silver lettering. He wore baggy
South Pole
jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger
skullcap. A pair of silver and black Nikes completed the look . . . urban thug.
He draped a huge platinum chain that resembled some type of wild animal
restraint around his neck. Malcolm glared at him.

“Why the fuck are you trying to look like a
fucking drug dealer when we got heat on us already? If we get stopped by the
cops, you know damn well I ain’t goin’ to jail.”

“Man, if we run into a cop they’ll spot your
spooky lookin’ ass long before they spot this chain. So, fuck it. It ain’t like
your ass is incognito. You couldn’t be low profile now if you tried.”

Malcolm looked at himself in the
living room mirror and considered maybe changing from the black suit into
something a little more understated, but the fangs would give him away no
matter what, and he wasn’t about to try and pull his own teeth. At least, not
now.

“Fuck it,” he said, then tightened
the belt on his trench coat and stepped out the door.

“Cops down here are a bunch of
cowards anyway. Ain’t no way a patrol cop is gonna try and stop two killers by
theirself. If they ain’t got SWAT behind them, they ain’t shit,” Rick said,
digging in a desk drawer for his pistol and hurrying close behind Malcolm.

They left with the shotgun tucked deep in the
pocket of Malcolm’s trench coat along with a long straight razor. Rick had a nine
millimeter Smith and Wesson that Malcolm guessed had never been fired. It had,
no doubt, sat in its fancy case ever since it was purchased. Malcolm knew Rick
wanted a gun just so he could say he had a gun and the nine millimeter had been
featured in so many rap videos that every wannabe thug who knew nothing about
guns now owned one. Malcolm wasn’t the type to carry a nine millimeter. The nine
millimeter shot sleek high-velocity bullets that left neat, clean,
through-and-through wounds that were easy for surgeons to stitch. Malcolm liked
blood. The grislier the wound, the better. He preferred his forty caliber
Sig-Sauer with its big, slow bullets that left exit wounds the size of children’s
fists. A nine millimeter was like a forty on stun, and compared to the shotgun,
it was a squirt gun.

Natasha’s place was thirteen blocks from Rick’s
house. She lived alone as far as Malcolm had been able to figure, though she
had a boyfriend who spent several nights a week at her apartment. Malcolm was
hoping he had chosen this night to sleep over. The detectives were right about
one thing. Killing only one victim no longer satisfied him. He needed more.

The little apartment atop the hoagie shop on Federal
Street where Natasha lived was surprisingly nice. It had new carpeting in a
gray that was almost silver with thick upgraded padding, new furniture in that
artsy antique style from Z-gallery made of iron and steel. The counter tops
were either cultured stone or tumbled marble. The cabinets, tables, chairs, and
bookcases were oak, mahogany, or cherry wood. A black leather sofa and a laptop
iMac computer completed the look of nuevo urban success. Malcolm couldn’t help
wonder what she did for a living.

“Where is this bitch?”

“She’ll be home soon. She probably went out on a
date with her little boyfriend.”

Malcolm looked around her apartment. There were
pictures of Natasha’s mother, her older sister, and her current boyfriend. He
picked up a photo album and began turning through the stiff, yellowing pages.
He wouldn’t admit it to himself, but he was secretly looking for a picture of
himself, an old letter or a poem, some sign that he had actually meant
something to her, had made some impact on her life.

There was nothing. He began tearing
her high school pictures in half with his teeth, remembering what that smooth
supple flesh had felt like beneath his lips years ago, imagining what it would
feel like between his teeth now.

Natasha had ripped his heart out
fifteen years ago. He would rip hers out today. His eyes began to tear up.
Malcolm roared and threw the photo album across the room. He smashed everything
he could get his hands on, shattering the beautiful, expensive furniture with
his fists, splintering the rich wood and sending shards of marble and granite
flying. His elbows cracked through table and counter tops with psychotic fury.

Rick watched without comment. He
muttered a silent prayer that Natasha made it home soon, before Malcolm got so
out of control he turned his fury on the closest living substitute, on Rick. He
took hold of the nine millimeter tucked in his waistband and jacked a round
into the chamber. Just in case.