After Death(53)

Here, no princess awaits him. Just maybe one uppity bitch who needs to be brought to her knees, apologize, plead for her life, and be buried alive with the boy she’s turned into a hopeless pussy. As satisfying as burying her alive would be, Aleem knows that he might have to forego that pleasure because of the need to deal with the SUVs. Although Kuba has hoped to use Nina for a while, he’ll have to be satisfied to wet his combat knife in mother and son and fantasize the sex later.

So much to think about. So it is when you’re the king wolf in the pack, everyone relying on you. If the vehicles won’t start, then wipe them down to eliminate fingerprints. When the smartphones are retrieved, if at least one is functioning, Aleem will call someone to drive here and take the crew home. Otherwise, Jason can hustle into town and find a public phone. Come morning, report the vehicles stolen, blame a rival gang. If the eight of them were never here, they don’t need to explain Nina’s Explorer. Anyhow, no one but Aleem’s homeys know John is his son. Once Nina was knocked up and Aleem didn’t want to deal with that, she was ashamed to have fallen for his sweet rush, a gangster like him, and she told no one who the father was. If an eager homicide dick or a green and high-minded prosecutor smells something, Aleem has a friend who is also a friend of the district attorney; the DA is a reasonable man who knows the value of time and will not waste his or that of his office on cases that can’t—or shouldn’t be—proven.

As the six men stand in the rain, looking at the complex of buildings, Jason Jones reveals that he has been thinking about the situation just as Aleem has been. “Say we find her.”

“Say,” Aleem encourages him.

“We come to teach her a lesson, take the boy, make him into a righteous brother. That it?”

“She can’t be taught,” Aleem says.

Kuba reminds them of a key fact of life. “A bitch can diss a man only so much, then he can’t say he’s a man no more iffen he still takes any shit from her.”

“That be truer than true,” Carlisle agrees.

Jason says, “So we pop her and take the boy?”

“We kill ’em both,” Aleem says.

For a long moment, the only sounds are the rain falling and the wind blowing and the skeleton trees creaking their dead joints.

Speedo breaks the silence. “You a hard man, Aleem.”

“That news to you?”

“I always known,” Speedo says. “Just not how hard.”

“You better know how hard.”

“I got it now.”

“He ain’t my son no more. It’s too late for him to be. She made him over into a trick poodle.”

“It’s a tragedy,” Kuba says.

Jason is concerned about the logistics. “So we pop a couple caps, then what we do with two stiffs?”

“We get my Aviator runnin’,” says Hakeem, “we could tie ’em to the roof rack.”

Carlisle disapproves of levity in this situation. “Whoever you tryin’ to be, Hakeem, you for sure ain’t no Kevin Hart or Dave Chappelle.”

“Can’t leave two stone-dead here with our wheels,” Jason says.

“We call Modeen and Lincoln to come get us,” Aleem says. “They bring plastic sheets and tape, wrap her and him, take ’em with us. We set our dead wheels on fire, say the Crips or MS-13 stole them. Why they drove here and burned them—who knows?”

Speedo wants to prove he really gets—and approves of—how hard Aleem is. “Back home, call Hector Salazar, bring the meat to him.”

Hector—of Salazar Marine Services—owns two substantial boats. He has a taste for taking risks of all kinds, a talent for evading authorities, and no moral compunctions whatsoever.

“Hector he takes the bodies out to sea,” Speedo continues, “chops ’em into chum, feeds the sharks.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jason says.

“Only thing,” Kuba says, “nobody’s gonna pop no caps, ’cause then we gotta throw away a gun has a bad history and maybe gotta wrap up loose brains and skull pieces. A knife don’t have no history like a gun. And done right, it’s neater.”

“It ain’t just a plan,” Hakeem declares, “it’s an episode of The Sopranos.”

“Three teams,” Aleem says, “two men to a building, till we searched ’em all. Remember the bitch has herself a piece, a trey eight, and she knows how to use it.”

Jason and Speedo each has a flashlight, so Aleem takes one for him and Kuba.

They move away from the trees, toward the buildings, one man short of being the Magnificent Seven, like in that old Western Aleem has watched several times. Even though they’re only six, they have an important advantage the seven didn’t possess, which is that they aren’t to any extent whatsoever restrained by a foolish sense of community values, by honor, by pity—or by anything, really.

The chance of finding Nina and John in one of these buildings is low, and the likelihood that the plan Aleem cooked up to deal with the four SUVs will work is even lower. However, this world doesn’t reward second-guessers. You can change direction if a fork in the path appears and has promise, but you can’t back up and rethink, because in this business, to both your enemies and your homeys, that looks like retreat. Retreat is seen as weakness, and the weak die young, which they deserve to do. The only thing that Aleem despises is weakness. Once you commit to an operation, you have to drive forward hard, never doubting, never relenting. If the result isn’t what you hoped, even if it’s a disaster, you can learn from it after it’s done. Anyhow, no mistake he can make is so bad that it can’t be erased with enough violence and cash. With a shitload of money, he can buy his way out of most trouble, and when money isn’t enough, he can kill his way out, which is why he has the respect of his homeboys and not just of his homeboys, but also the respect of all those who are gangsters disguised as pillars of their communities, as friends of the working man and woman. You can’t win a war if you don’t drive forward hard and harder even when fighting seems hopeless. And to Aleem Sutter, life is war.