Death List

  As obvious as it was, it went unnoticed by Angelo. He was too concerned with the police car parked down the street. He fumbled in his pockets until he found his car keys, then he attempted to make a convivial social impression for the officers watching. He puckered up his ruddy pink lips and tried to kiss Betty, but she wasn't having any of it. She didn't even want the man to kiss her on the cheek. She broke away from his embrace.

  "It don't take all that," she stated coldly as she backed away from him, still smiling and grinning. The smile never touched her cold black eyes.

  "Well, I'll be a sonofabitch," Benson growled harshly. "Here we fuck up half the morning waiting on this bastard, and all the time he's upstairs playing house with one of Kenyatta's whores!"

  Ryan cursed loudly too. "It looks that way, don't it. He probably came to collect the rent and the broad gave him some cunt for the rent money."

  The two detectives watched the fat man drive past them slowly. It seemed as if he was trying to remove some lipstick from his cheek with a hankie as he went past.

  "Well, what now?" Ryan asked quietly, deep in thought. Something was wrong, but for the moment he couldn't seem to put his finger on it.

  "I don't know," Benson replied. "Maybe it would be better if we went on in. I think I'll go home and have some sleep. We seem to be too close to something not to be gettin' any answers."

  Ryan shook his head. "It's right before us, Ben, but for some damn reason we can't see it. Maybe you're right. After some rest, we might be able to think better. Drop me off at my place, will you?"

  Benson nodded his head in agreement. "I'll pick you back up tonight, say around ten o'clock." Neither man bothered to speak again until Benson pulled up on Carpenter Street and let his partner out.

  "We missed something, Ben," Ryan stated, shaking his head. "I don't know what the fuck it was, but I just got the feelin' that something escaped us that shouldn't have."

  "Maybe," Benson replied. "After you sleep on it, it might come to you." He grinned, then put the car in gear and pulled away from the curb. Even as he drove, the same thought kept nagging him; then it hit him like a ton of bricks.

  Kenyatta was a black militant. There was no way in the world he would allow one of his black women to try turning a trick with a honky. They just wouldn't do it. His group preached against the white man, so it had been all a fake-out-something to fool the two foolish cops sitting down the street.

  He slammed on his brakes and made a U-turn. It was too important to pass up. Ryan had the license number of the fat man's car, and he needed it. It looked as if there wouldn't be much sleep that afternoon for either one of the detectives. This clue was too good to pass up, and the case was too hot to not follow up each and every fucking thing they got their hands on.

  When he pulled up in front of Ryan's house, he just blew on the horn. In seconds his partner came out of the freshly painted white house.

  Ryan must have sensed something, because he ran down the battleship-gray-colored steps. When he reached the car, he didn't bother with just putting his head through the open window. He opened the door and got in. In a second, Benson explained why he had come back.

  As Benson talked, Ryan nodded his head up and down. "I knew it," the man exploded. "It was there, right there before us, but neither one of us could put our finger on it at the time. Well, quit wasting time. Let's get downtown. This fat bastard had better be clean, 'cause we're going to do a lot of checkin' up on his ass."

  7

  AS KENYATTA STARED at the death list in his hands he could feel a thrill of exhilaration racing through his veins. Now they could do more than just merely exist. The five grand he had paid out for it was nothing. Money meant very little to him anyway. It was just a tool, something to use to gain the things he wanted for his people. Now they could begin to move against the dope pushers, the ones who supplied the city, not just the neighborhood pushers who sold dope to take care of their own drug habits.

  He glanced around the apartment. He had sent out the word and the people were arriving. Loud, raucous laughter came from the front room, where a group of people waited. It was time, and everybody could sense it. The members were in a happy, responsive mood. Kenyatta had sent out the word that they were to meet at the ranch and everybody was moving to the country again.

  There was a cacophony of sound coming from the people in all the rooms. It was an atmosphere of social gaiety as everybody looked forward to the trip. Some cars had already left so that things would be ready when the main party arrived at the farm.

  Betty sat on the arm rest of the overstuffed chair in the living room next to Kenyatta, smiling broadly at everybody.

  "Eddie-Bee," Kenyatta called out loudly. "Hey, Eddie-Bee, I thought you took the station wagon around to Johnnie's to get the starter fixed on it."

  "I did, baby, I did, but wasn't no reason for me to sit around there and wait for them to finish workin' on it. Johnnie said he'd call as soon as he finished workin' on it and that Buick he's puttin' a muffler on. I told him we wanted both of them finished as soon as goddamn possible, so he said to give him thirty or forty minutes and he'd have them together for us."

  Kenyatta replied by flashing Eddie-Bee one of his most indulgent smiles. "My man," he said loudly, "that's what I dig about the brothers in this organization. Ain't no bullshit about them. All of you have been trained. You're together, ready to cope with the white man, while the other brothers out in the streets are still blinded by the white man's shit."

  As he talked, Kenyatta raised his voice into a lec turing tone. "Each and every one of you in this room right now has been trained until you're like a machine-dangerous to those who try to handle you and handle you wrong."

  The people in the room fell silent, listening to their leader. What he said was the truth. Each and every one of them were trained killers, the women as well as the men. There was not a person inside the building who wouldn't kill a white or even a black person if Kenyatta so ordered it. They were all assassins, trained in the art of death.

  Even the tall, attractive black woman who sat at his elbow could murder women or children if the need arose. Kenyatta had trained his small band of disciples so well that there was no feeling of guilt over an act of violence, no matter how brutal it might be. Whatever they did was justified as an application of justice-black justice. It was the only kind of justice that held any significant meaning to any of them. That white justice was a mockery could be seen openly every day in the courtrooms-used for the rich and forced on the poor.

  "Red has gone to the farm," Kenyatta continued. Everybody was listening quietly to what he had to say. "I sent him and his lady on out with another couple. They took most of the guns with them, so we won't have to worry about transporting our weapons. I'm not sure, but the police may have been watching the place. When I say I'm not sure, I mean I don't have any idea why they would bother to go through the trouble of watching us. We ain't doing nothing." His words brought laughter from his listeners.

  Slowly, like a well-trained actor, Kenyatta raised his hand for silence. "I don't want to get into it real deep right now, but we got what we been waitin' for. I got the names of some of the biggest honkies in the fuckin' city. I'm talkin' about the motherfuckin' honkies who have been living out in Grosse Pointe, while selling dope down in the center city. Of course they don't have to come down here and sell it themselves, 'cause they got a good head nigger who goes by the name of Kingfisher. But once we knock Kingfisher's ass off, they goin' have mighty big trouble findin' another good nigger like him!"

  There was a roar like the sea makes when it's beginning an angry storm. The storm was brewing right there in that small apartment. It had started to brew many years ago, before many of the dedicated young blacks were even born.

  Zeke, the tall, light-brown-complexioned man who had been in on the holdup with Red, spoke up. "It's damn sure time, Ken," he stated, using the short nickname that only a few of Kenyatta's closest friends ever used.

 
There was the sound of the rear doorbell ringing. Instantly the people in the apartment became silent, each wondering who would be using the alley entrance. To get up the rear steps, a person had to come through the alley, then walk through a trash-littered garage, which led into the small enclosure that was the backyard. After getting to the yard, they could only come up on the rear porch and ring the back doorbell. The stairway that led upstairs was enclosed, so that somebody had to go down the back steps to unlock the door.

  The people waited quietly to see who was coming up. Betty moved uneasily on her perch as the newcomer approached. As the man entered, everybody there recognized him. He was the kind of person who would be recognized in a crowd. His arrival caused a different kind of reaction in each person there, but the women reacted the most. Betty was not the only woman who moved back in fear.

  The man wore a long black coat that was wrapped around him like a cloak, covering a tall, very spare body. Beneath the rounded dome of a closely shaved skull, large black eyes peered from either side of a jutting, beak-like nose. The mouth below was sunken, the lips puckered, and the chin had a sharp upward hook. With one dark brown hand the man caressed the bony line of his jaw, staring coldly around at the people in the room. Under the probing of those lusterless black eyes, each person either waved at him feebly or glanced away as if they hadn't noticed his searching stare. The atmosphere in the room changed. It was as if something unclean, something foul with slime, had crept amongst them.

  Kenyatta seemed as if he was the only person in the room who hadn't noticed the change. "What's hap- penin', Creeper?" he asked, as Creeper stopped in front of him.

  Betty quickly got up from her perch on the side of the chair and walked back towards the kitchen. "I think I'll get a drink. You want one, daddy?" she asked over her shoulder.

  "Naw, baby, I don't want anything, but Creeper might care for a drink." He glanced up at the man. As their gaze met, Kenyatta experienced a shrinking inner horror. This man was something he did not and could not understand. He was a man who was totally alien to his own world. The Creeper was one of the oldest members of his organization. He wasn't dedicated to any cause except Kenyatta, and only because Kenyatta had saved his life. He had been shot and wounded by the police, trying to find a hiding place in an alley, when Kenyatta had found him and taken him home, cared for his wound, then gave him a place to live. For that help, the tall black man called "the Creeper" had become like a shadow to Kenyatta.

  "Well, what will it be, Creeper?" Betty asked, not trying to hide the dislike in her voice.

  "Did I ask for anything?" Creeper replied, then turned his back on her as if she wasn't there. For some strange reason, out of all the people in Kenyatta's organization, Betty was the only one that Creeper really hated. Even he couldn't understand the intensity of his hatred for the woman. He blamed her for coming between him and Kenyatta, but it went deeper than that. He had never cared for another human being in his life. Then Kenyatta had come to his rescue. It was not just the help either, it was the way the other man treated him-like a man. Kenyatta didn't turn away from him in horror because of his looks. He'd been aware for years of his looks since he'd been a child, when kids had started calling him "the Creeper" because of the similarity of his features to those of the man who played the Creeper in the movies. In time, he'd come to accept it, not caring one way or another what they called him. He was a man who lived alone, until he met Kenyatta.

  The man stood over Kenyatta until Kenyatta grew uneasy. "Well, what is it, brother? You seem to have something on your mind but you ain't saying nothing."

  For an answer, Creeper let his eyes roam over the other people in the room. "You know me better than to think I'd say anything in front of them," he replied, loud enough for everybody to hear. "The first time one of these niggers gets uptight, they goin' blow this whole fuckin' thing up in your face, Kenyatta, you just wait and see."

  Before Kenyatta could give an answer to that, Creeper let his coat slip open. "I took care of that little thing you asked me to handle for you," he stated harshly, not bothering to rebutton his coat.

  For a minute Kenyatta couldn't think. The man standing in front of him was covered with blood. What was the man talking about, Kenyatta asked himself. He remembered asking the man to check up on Kingfisher's right-hand man, but other than that, he couldn't remember asking him to take care of anything.

  Kenyatta rose from his chair in one smooth motion and beckoned with his head. "Come on," he said, leading the way towards the bedroom. He wanted to get to the bottom of this, and the sooner the better. Something had happened, and whatever it was, blood had been spilled.

  Across town in his penthouse apartment, the Kingfisher moved around like a man struck down by an unknown force. The information that had just come to him was so shocking that he couldn't believe it. The Kingfisher was used to death but not when it was an act of gross mutilation so close to home.

  As Kingfisher paced back and forth in his penthouse apartment, he kept murmuring to himself. "Too close, too fuckin' close to home..., if they can knock off my right-hand man." He shook his head, unnerved to his very roots by this murderous act.

  8

  AFTER THE BRUTAL DEATHS of Kenyatta's people by Kingfisher's hit men, Kenyatta had called one person in and given him one assignment: find out which ones were responsible, then handle it if you can. It hadn't taken the man that long to find out who had given the order, and when he reported back that it was the Kingfisher, he was then given another order. If you can't get the big fish, get the next biggest fish in the pond. Even that order proved quite hard to do. The next biggest fish was Kingfisher's right-hand man, Sam. Sam was as hard to reach as the Kingfisher-almost.

  It took a while for the Creeper to find the weak link. He had the uncanny ability of being able to pry into things that ordinary men would have long given up on. The Creeper believed that every man had a weakness, somewhere; all you had to do was search for it, and eventually it would come to light.

  In the case of the Kingfisher's right-hand man and trusted personal bodyguard, Sam, the truth wasn't too hard to dig up. Once the Creeper found out that Sam had a wife, two girls, and a four-year-old boy, it was just a matter of time. The man who had helped order the death of four members of Kenyatta's organization would eventually show up at his home. Only the Creeper didn't have the patience to wait until Sam decided to pay his wife and kids a visit. He decided to hurry the matter up. Having already been given his orders, he didn't bother to check back with Kenyatta. He did to the best of his ability just what had been asked of him.

  Mary, the woman who had made the mistake of bearing two children for Sam, knew nothing of Sam's business. All she knew was that he made a good living. He was the first black man she had ever lived with who took care of her and her children so well that she never worried about money problems. Whenever she needed money, she just called Sam and explained to him what she needed it for and how much. It didn't really matter that she didn't have a marriage license; Sam took care of her better than the man she had married earlier in her life. That marriage hadn't lasted but two years, and in those two years she caught more hell than the average woman ran into in a lifetime. But the marriage had been legal. She kept the proof of her first marriage locked up in an iron chest in the closet, but she didn't really need it. The two girls who belonged to Sam were more proof than any piece of paper could ever be.

  Her two girls by Sam were both born out of wedlock but, as far as she was concerned, Sam was her husband even though they had never gone before a preacher. He was good to all of his children. Whenever he bought something for the girls, he made sure he brought the boy something too. The girls, one three and the other fifteen months, were treated like small dolls by their father whenever he had the time to be around them. Most of the time he wasn't home, but he made sure they never wanted for anything. It was one of the few joys Sam really got out of life, buying things for the kids-things that he wasn't able to have when he was a ch
ild because of money problems.

  The small family lived happily in this manner until the day that Mary saw a strange man bringing her son David home. The man was monstrous and ugly. Mary wondered how the preschool could allow such a person to work for them, but at once she regretted her thoughts. Even this human being had to live. It was for sure he hadn't made himself, so who was she to complain about his looks. Overwhelmed by pity, she opened her door wide, allowing the man who clutched her struggling son to enter.

  "What did he do at school?" she managed to ask as they entered the house. "Do you have to hold him so roughly?" she inquired, as David tried to twist out of the vicious hold the man had on his arm. Tears rolled from David's eyes, even after the man released him. The man glanced around the house.

  He noticed the expensive carpet on the floor and the dark brown wall-to-wall fabric that matched the golden colored furnishings. The couch and matching chair, the marble coffee table, the solid marble end tables, all gave an idea of the good life that was being lived here.

  "Oh, Sam don't do too bad for himself, do he?" the man inquired. His voice was low and carried a sharp note in it.

  At the mention of Sam, Mary's heart seemed to freeze. She realized at once this wasn't something her son had done at school. The man had used David as an excuse to get inside the house. Oh, my God, she thought to herself. Suddenly the baby girl started crying in her playpen, which was kept right in the front room.

  As she started to go to the child, she said, "There must be some mistake somewhere. This Sam you're talking about, he doesn't live here."