Slipping

  Praise for

  TRIPLE TAKE

  “Triple Take explodes off the page—a blood-soaked, guns-blazing literary assault on the senses.”

  —David Isay, public-radio producer and coauthor of Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago

  Praise for

  THE APOSTLES

  “Every nail-biting, adrenaline-laced, heart-racing page of The Apostles kept me on the edge of my seat.”

  —Nikki Turner, author of The Hustler's Wife and The Glamorous Life

  “Y. Blak Moore's The Apostles is the truth, naked and unashamed.”

  —Solomon Jones, author of Ride or Die

  “I was highly impressed with The Apostles and Blak's ability to take street fiction, and my perception of the genre, and show me a better quality than what I've read before. Though dealing with the street life, I didn't feel as if he glorified it, nor were any of the scenes over-the-top or just thrown in for shock factor. They were real. Well-written, fast-paced, and nonstop action. I applaud

  —The Rawsistaz Reviewers

  ALSO BY Y. BLAK MOORE

  Triple Take

  The Apostles

  To my daughter Cacharel. The sight of your pretty brown face and innocent but knowing eyes as an infant made me want to get clean.

  To my daughter Ciara. You're too much like your doggone mama, but I won't hold that against you.

  To my “sun,” Yanier. Hopefully you won't follow my misguided path to get to where you want to be in life.

  To my Number 1, Akilah. You held me down like free lunch and I love you for that. Keep checking for me 'cause I'll keep checking for you.

  To my pops, Franklin Moore. You lost your life to your drug addiction long before you had a chance to see me grow into a man. I hope that you would have loved me as I love my “sun.” It has taken decades but I have finally learned to forgive you, if only because of my own experience with mind- and mood-altering chemicals.

  To every last one of y'all out there slaving day in and day out to try to quiet those cravings for narcotics to medicate your tired souls in this land of less-than-nothings and defeated underdogs.

  PROLOGUE

  DUSK SETTLED ON THE VERMIN-INFESTED TENEMENTS OF Chicago's ghettos. Nightfall may bring peace to the inhabitants of suburbia, but the darkness that covers the inner city serves to uncloak its vampires, the living dead that feed on one another for sustenance. Death accompanied the darkness like an uninvited party guest. In ghettos all around the globe many won't survive the deadly darkness. Some will cross the void at the hands of a trigger-happy robber, others will succumb to the poison of narcotics, still others will fall victim to the knife of a spurned lover.

  In the morning the so-called authorities will try to patch up the ghetto's wounds. In an attempt to pacify the so-called community leaders they will dispatch their brand of justice, but only in the daylight hours. They know that the night be longs to the vampires. Furtively, outraged and upstanding citizens will assist the authorities in their misguided, ignorant efforts to mete out punishment. With impunity they rule the daylight hours trying to repeal the ghetto's madness, but they know they have only a few short hours before the streetlights blink on again, signaling the return of the vampires.

  As the sun was swallowed by the darkness, a forlorn figure sat on the floor of a sagging, gutted-out tenement. The young man was dirty and disheveled. Besides the filthy clothes on his body, his only worldly possessions were spread about before him: a glass crackpipe, four cigarette lighters, a Baggie containing an ounce of crack cocaine, and a chrome .357 Python with a wicked gleam to it. These meager articles were the cornerstone of his lowly existence. He was a hype, geeker, clucker, crackhead, or whatever the current ghetto terminology was for being addicted to the all-consuming drug crack. He seemed more dead than alive, and if not for his sparse movements and the tortured sighs that escaped him every so often, one would have thought that he had already passed from this realm. Donald “Don-Don” Haskill was a wanted man, if you could call him a man. His age didn't make him a man, only the horrors he'd seen and had perpetrated granted him that boon. Several irate groups of people were scouring his old stomping grounds in search of him. He had been hiding in this apartment for close to three days. The last bit of food that had crossed his lips was a candy bar more than two days ago. He was so thirsty he had been contemplating drinking out of the rusty toilet in the bathroom. The only thing that deterred him was the smell of the rotted water and the fear of ingesting maggots.

  Depression blanketed him as he thought of the circumstances that led up to his present dilemma. He heaved himself up from the floor and walked over to the window. He stared out of the broken, dirty panes at the inky shroud of darkness settling over the city. Finally he reached a decision. He glanced at the luminescent dial of his cheap wristwatch. He would make his move soon. Gathering his things, he inspected his handgun. A feeling of companionship flooded his soul as he held the pistol. Through all of his escapades it had been his best friend—more faithful than any woman, more steadfast than any friend. Unlike fickle semiautomatics, his Python had never let him down. Even now, when he had been neglecting his appearance and hygiene, his revolver remained clean, well oiled, and shiny.

  Don placed the pistol within arm's reach on a tattered piece of cloth on the floor and reached for his crack. He pinched a piece from the bag and placed it on the screen of his pipe. Using his cigarette lighter, he touched the flame to the piece of crack and allowed it to melt the white-yellow rock, and then he inhaled the effervescent smoke. After he expelled the smoke from his nose he coughed until he hacked up a ball of yellowish mucus. With a mighty whoosh he expelled the ball of phlegm across the room. It made a slapping sound on the wall ten feet away. The superfast effect of the crack relaxed and tightened his entire body and he leaned back against the wall and replayed the events that led him here.

  1

  “DONALD HASKILL, GET YO LAZY BUTT UP AND GET READY for school! Don-Don, you heard me, get yo raggedy, nappy-head butt up!”

  “I'm up, I'm up. Quit hollering like a fool!” Don answered grumpily.

  “No you ain't, yo lazy butt! Don't make me come up there and throw some cold water on yo funky butt!”

  Ignoring his sister's last remark, he asked, “Ay, girl, is Momma gone?”

  “Boy, yeah. Momma been gone since six o'clock this morning. She waited for you to come in till one o'clock last night. She said to tell you to start bringing yo butt in this house at a decent hour. Just because she be spending time over her boyfriend house, she said to let you know that you only seventeen and you better start coming in this doggone house at a decent time on school nights.”

  Don cut her off. “Did she leave me some money?”

  His sister left the bathroom and climbed the few stairs to Don's bedroom door, opened the door wide, and leaned on the doorjamb.

  She gloated, “She left me some money, but she didn't leave you any. She would have, but you weren't here. She said that she would have had to stop at the cash station and get some out and she wasn't going to go through all of that trouble for you and you weren't even here. If you stopped hanging out in the streets with them no-good friends of yours and got you a little part-time job or something after school then you wouldn't have to wait on Momma to give you money all the time. I got to get ready for school. Something you should be concerning yourself about.”

  As Rhonda retreated to finish preparing to leave, Don chuckled at his sister's short speech. He loved Rhonda and he knew that she loved him, but she seemed to hate all of his friends and told him so at every available opportunity. She was nineteen, two years his senior, but she thought she was thirty. Because their mother worked long, hard hours as a Chicago policewoman, attended college, and still tried t
o have some semblance of a love life, Rhonda stepped up to play the role of surrogate mother to the hilt. He had to admit, she did manage to take pretty good care of home base with his mother being gone so much. She even looked like their mother, especially when she was fussing at him.

  Don couldn't remember much of his father, outside of his death, but his aunts and uncles claimed that he was the spitting image of the man. Whenever the subject of his old man arose his mother became tight-lipped. From what information he had been able to piece together about his father, his story was the same as too many Black men in America. Systematically raped and dehumanized by the unholy caste system in America, his father turned to the bottle. After four years of diligent service in the army, then as a glorified janitor at city hall, he grew tired of being overlooked for promotions. He thought no one at work noticed his deepening depression. The last day of his life he appeared to be happier than he had been in years. He whistled a cheery tune all day as he completed his daily tasks. When his coworkers noticed his obvious attitude adjustment and questioned him about the change, his only reply was a smile that seemed to signify that he had a secret—a secret that tickled him pink. At quitting time he cheerfully bid everyone farewell. At home he ate the dinner his wife had thoughtfully prepared in between her job as a loss-prevention specialist at Marshall Field's downtown on State Street and her classes at Kennedy King Junior College. He drank two beers as he watched the evening news and then he took his .38 caliber handgun out of the closet, climbed to the roof of their apartment building, sat on a milk crate placed against the brick chimney, and ate a bullet.

  On the roof, with a large portion of his head missing, is where Don-Don found his father. He had done his best to make several airplanes from notebook paper and took them to the roof to launch them with his dad. His four-year-old mind couldn't contemplate the blood and brain matter splattered on the bricks behind his dad, so he shook his fa-ther's shoulder to tell him to get up and help him fly his airplanes. His father's lifeless body sprawled forward and pinned Don to the rooftop. As blood and goo oozed from his father's mouth and head onto Don's face, he began screaming, and when help finally came, that was how they found them.

  At first Don's mother didn't think she could live without his father. After all, he was her first love and the father of both of her children. When she first found out that she was pregnant with Rhonda, she thought that he would back out on her, but he married her and put his dream of becoming a musician on hold. Instead he did the honorable thing and went off to join the army to support his family. On one of his home passes he planted Donald in his wife, when Rhonda was eighteen months old. During his years in the service he appeared to be reasonably faithful and after his honorable discharge he returned home and got a job. For a while he tried to hang out with his musician buddies, but their drug abuse, womanizing ways, and general lack of responsibility made him, a faithfully married, employed father of two, a stranger among them.

  After her husband's suicide, it almost made Hazel want to take her own life, just knowing that the man she loved with all her heart was going through enough mental anguish to make him take his own life, but he hadn't confided in her. The thought of their two kids allowed her to draw from the reserve strength all Black mothers seem to have to continue on with her life. Using the money from her husband's meager life-insurance policy, she purchased a small house in Chicago's West Woodlawn area, at the time a middle-working-class neighborhood, and an old jalopy to get back and forth to her job. A few years later she took the city policeman's test and passed it with flying colors and joined the force. Over the years she found herself increasingly overprotective of Don. She would scrutinize his every mood and give in to his every need. She hadn't dated seriously for close to a decade of her children's lives, and even now that she had a new boyfriend, a Cook County sheriff's deputy, she wouldn't really allow him around her children. She had recently returned to school to earn her master's degree so she could take the lieutenant's exam. With the hours Don kept, he rarely seemed to see his mother except on her days off. Whenever he did manage to bump into her, their face-to-face encounters usually ended up in shouting matches spanning everything from his grades to his street life to his blatant disregard for house rules.

  “Damn, I needed a few dollars too,” Don said as he put his feet on the floor.

  He flinched at the cool wood on his bare soles. His young bones creaked as he bent over to pick up the pair of pants he'd worn the previous day. Out of the hip pocket he fished half of a blunt. He straightened up and looked in the large mirror on top of his dresser. He saw a brown-skinned boy just a shade away from being a man; standing at five foot ten and weighing 173 pounds he wasn't really skinny, but he wasn't heavy either. He didn't have six-pack abs, but there wasn't any flab around his middle. His short fade sported a few waves on the top, but they weren't really defined because he didn't have the patience to sit and brush his hair hour after hour. Strong peach fuzz was evident around his mouth and under his chin, complementing his strong facial features. With a heavy sigh he lit the tip of the blunt with his lighter and took a long pull. He held the smoke in his lungs until he choked. For his efforts he was rewarded by the instant euphoric effects of the weed on his system. With his sister in mind he walked down the short hallway to the top of the staircase.

  He called, “Rhonda! You want to hit this shit! It might mellow yo high-strung ass out some!”

  “I don't think so. You don't even need to be smoking that stuff in the house! I don't even see how you smoke that mess so early in the damn morning! That's all you little dummies spend every cent you get your hands on! I'm leaving you ten dollars on the table. I've got to go. I can't be late for humanities because of you. Make sure you take your behind to school too!”

  The front door slammed as he headed for the bathroom. He pulled his boxers down and perched on the white porcelain toilet. Leisurely he thumbed through a Sports Illustrated magazine while he smoked and obeyed nature's order to put out the garbage. He wondered what was on the agenda for the day. He had to laugh at that thought. He already knew the answer—the same as every other day. Ditching school, hanging out, dodging the police, trying to come upon money for weed and alcohol, and trying to talk some young girl out of her panties. Even though it was a school day, attending was definitely out of the question. He hadn't been to school in two months. School was for the winter time. It was spring.

  After showering and dressing, he devoured half of a box of Cap'n Crunch and left the house. His first stop was Momma Taylor's weed spot on Vernon, the best weed in the neighborhood. Momma Taylor had the biggest bags and the best green that could be bought for ten dollars. After his purchase he ducked into the first unlocked hallway he came to and rolled two blunts. He dumped the contents of the cheap cigars on the carpeted steps of the hallway. He slid one of the blunts into the top of his sock and pulled his pant leg back down. He lit the other as he relaxed on the stairs. He smoked about half of the blunt before putting it out and sliding it into the band of his Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap.

  He then headed to the pool hall. Confidently he pushed open the door and stepped inside. He began to greet his boys.

  “Li'l Joe, what's up, nigga? Damn, Semo, who cut yo hair? Want me to whup his ass for you? Tabo, yeah, nigga. Don't pretend like you don't see me, nigga. What's up wit my ten dollars? You always trying to act like you broke. We gone fall out about that little money.”

  Happy that the whole gang was there, Don exchanged a few more playful remarks while he settled into the atmosphere. No sooner had he deposited a quarter into a video game than a light-skinned, wavy-haired boy stepped over to join him by the game.

  “Double-D, what's up, nigga?” the boy greeted him happily.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Don continued to fight off the demons in the video game as he replied, “Dre, what the deal, baby boy? What you niggas get into when I left last night? I was so fucked up, I don't even remember going to the crib.”

 
“Don, yo ass missed it! After you broke it out last night, we was laying back, niggas sleep and shit, then Gail and her ugly-ass sister came through.”

  “Gail?”

  “Big-nose Gail, that got that ugly-ass sister that so damn thick. Man we got to pouring gin in them hoes. That do-it fluid got them bitches hot and it was on.”

  “What you mean?”

  Dre pulled an imaginary train whistle cord. “Choo, choo.”

  “Get yo lying ass outta here!” Don said, not wanting to believe that he had missed out on the main event.

  “Nigga, I ain't lying. We all hit them bitches. Jag, Carlos, Keno, and Big Man. I hit both of them. Gail wouldn't suck no dick, though. Her ugly-ass sister was trying to but it felt like she had a mouth full of razor blades. And guess what?”

  “What, nigga?” Don asked as he slapped the buttons and joystick.

  “Nigga, you just salty cause you missed out on that pussy,” Dre said.

  “Whatever, nigga,” Don scoffed. He lied, “I ain't salty 'bout no big-nose Gail and her ugly-ass sister. I can get both of them bitches if I wanted to. Now fuck all that. What was you finta say?”

  “Oh yeah. After we all had a couple of go-rounds wadn't no more rubbers and shit, right? Man, this nigga Jag get to searching like crazy for a rubber. Everybody telling him ain't no more, right. This thirsty-ass nigga get to hitting Gail raw. We tripping on this nigga, right. Most of us ain't hitting shit raw, 'specially after that little runner Miesha damn near burnt our dicks off last summer.”

  “You ain't lying,” Don agreed as he thought about the severe pain he experienced as he urinated one morning three days after he and his friends ran a train on Miesha. “That girl had me leaking like a broken faucet.”

  “Right, right. Well, by this time, Gail was passed out anyway. She stretched out on the couch with her mouth wide open and Jag is running up in her. Just when he 'bout to nut he jump up with his pants around his ankles and aims for her mouth. When he jumped up, Gail woke up and as he aiming for her face she move. He trying to move with her and tripped on his pants. Anyway, to make a long story short, he missed and Semo was salty than a motherfucker. Enough of that shit, though. I just came from yo crib trying to catch you. I got business to discuss.”