The Tragic Flaw Read online

  Pete, whose blood alcohol content is roughly point three five, thinks about his four kids at home and how is wife resembles Jimmy, just a little bigger.

  He then looks over to Jimmy to get the okay, as if he was asking, “Is it okay, meaning safe, for me to hang out with these thuggish monkeys?” Jimmy smiles, and gives a slight nod, meaning, Yes. You have my word you’ll be safe. Pete grins back, knowing that if Cicero or Kam were to cross Jimmy, they’d never be seen again. Jimmy and the other man slide into a Town Car and quickly leave the scene.

  “Let’s go,” Pete tells Cicero, agreeing to attend the soiree.

  “Well, hey, you guys have a good time,” Brad says to the guys before hopping in his BMW.

  They all look disappointed.

  “Come on, Bradley, we’ll have a good time,” Cicero says. “Hell, you might be able to stick your foot up someone’s ass again.”

  Kam and C burst into laughter.

  “Naw, I have a lot of work to do,” Brad responds. “You guys have fun. And, Pete, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

  “That leaves me a ton of fucking options,” Pete throws back. Cicero and Kam chuckle it up and Brad departs without having his balls busted any further.

  All-chrome seventeen-inch wire rims revolve like the moon around the Earth on Kam’s classic Chevy Impala. The ten coats of sky-blue paint and three clear coats make it look like a piece of hard candy. Good enough to eat. The refurbishing cost thousands of dollars and hours, including the initial trip to Columbus, Ohio, to pick up the then-rusty piece of junk.

  But now it’s flawless, and the countless show trophies Kam has picked up over the years are proof of that. The 454 under the hood roars after every stop. It’s the king of mechanic beasts in the concrete jungle. And this late at night, the Kansas City streets are always vacant, so Kam opens it up on the empty roads.

  After a few minutes of driving, the trio hits the east side of town, where lives are lost over mere chump change. And often, disrespect can lead to T-shirts with photographs on them. Smoke from burning hickory billows from a small family-owned barbecue restaurant.

  Regardless of how tough the K.C. mafiosos claim to be, they rarely venture over here, and Pete, who is sitting in the backseat, is a tad concerned.

  “Hey, where the hell are we going? I thought we were going to see some, uh, shakers or whatever,” he asks.

  “Dude, why you actin’ ’noided?” Kam asks, talking slowly.

  “’Noided?” inquires Pete.

  “It means you’re acting paranoid. Look, relax, Pete, we’re almost there,” Cicero reassures, calmly sipping from his snifter.

  Kam suddenly then interjects, “Oh! I forgot to get something.”

  Cicero and Pete both look at him.

  “What did you forget,” Cicero asks.

  “The honey,” Kam answers as he checks his Swiss chronograph diving watch. It’s 1:59 a.m. “Cool, the l.i.q. is still open.”

  Pete smiles.

  “You guys weren’t playing, were you?” he cheerfully shouts. “These bitches must be some true sluts.”

  Kam and Cicero both smile.

  The Chevy glides past Freedom Fountain, which often functioned as a swimming pool for Kansas City’s poor black community. Kameron spent many summer days splashing in it, but tonight it is darkly silent and barren.

  After cutting a few corners, they pull to a local corner store, and Kam hops out his ride and runs in. Lyrics from an underground Bay Area rapper blast through his fifteen-speaker system and sound crystal clear.

  “I speak another language but I’m not Scottish, got more homies in jail, than I do in college.”

  Cicero looks back at Pete, who’s trying not to look too nervous, even though he is.

  “Hey, Pete, these girls are freaks,” Cicero reassures him in a low whisper. “This one has this trick she does with honey. I’m telling you, it’s phenomenal. She’s a wild beast!”

  Pete cheeses with glee.

  “Well, let’s fucking get there already!”

  Just then Kam returns with a medium-sized plastic bear full of honey.

  “Yea! Let’s do this,” he tells his passengers before mashing the accelerator.

  The three men soon arrive at Thirty-Seventh Street to an old three-story house with recently added aluminum siding. The contractor did a terrible job. Silence fills the block, and the fall nip has caused most of the hustlers to go elsewhere for at least a few hours.

  A six-foot black iron gate surrounds the home. A red light bulb beams from the front porch.

  Several cars and trucks fill the empty gravel-covered lot next door, which functions as convenient parking for this black-owned crap house and brothel.

  They exit Kam’s saucy transport and begin walking toward the house. He has the honey in hand. Pete’s head is on a swivel, constantly looking over both shoulders for foolhardy stick-up kids and raving junkies. But none approach.

  Two digital cameras monitor their position and the gate buzzes as they near it and proceed through.

  Cicero takes the lead and knocks on the door, three distinct times.

  Knock.

  Knock.

  Knock.

  A very large fifty-something man of African descent opens the heavy door and stares at the faces. He spends more time on Pete’s but nevertheless tells the three, “Come on in.”

  Upon entering, partially muffled music from the “Artist,” once again known as Prince, can be heard coming from upstairs.

  On the first floor to the left is a huge fifty-seven-inch big-screen television, and to the right, just past the staircase, is a bar complete with drunks and neon Budweiser signs.

  A few guys watch the former Kansas City Kings take on the Lakers with a feeling of sick nostalgia. They were never nearly that good when they were in the Show Me State. There’s a pool table where a dining room would be, and a jukebox in the space usually dedicated to curio cabinets and fine china.

  Cicero motions for Kam and Pete to follow as he makes his way up the red carpeted stairs to the second floor, where Pete is surprised to see three topless women gyrating for customers with dollar bills in hand.

  All are topless in different color thong bikini bottoms. One in the distance toward the left is about five feet four inches and caramel; five feet nine when you tack on the five-inch clear plastic platform shoes she has on. Pelvic muscles create an erotic oscillation along her waistline. She’s Kam’s favorite, and he smiles at her with that expensive grin. She acknowledges with a wide grin of her own. Her face is simple and cute.

  The nearest one, milky with sapphire-blue eyes, catches Pete’s gaze. Her fiery hair makes her stand out even further in this room of brunettes. And at thirty-six C, her saline-filled faux breasts are superb. She knows the game, so she winks at Pete, and like most tricks, he instantly thinks she likes him. It’s the oldest stripper ploy in the book.

  “Holy shit!” Pete spits. “How come I never knew about this place?”

  Kam and Cicero laugh. Where there should have been two modest bedrooms, the sheet rock has been hauled off and a large stage complete with a shiny brass pole has been installed. Surrounded by mirrors, the third woman dances on the stage alone, as a member of the local United Auto Workers union tips her a ten-spot.

  She and Cicero have history. Brief history. Brief-blowjob-on-the-first-night-they-met-in-the-back-of-the-SUV history. She called his last cell phone so much he had the number changed—twice. Regardless of that, she still smiles at him, recalling how he smelled like baby powder. He stares at her long brown legs and flowing curly locks, but doesn’t return her affectionate gesture.

  They sit at a small four-seat bar that’s about five feet long and manned by somebody’s uncle.

  “Hey, uh, excuse me,” Pete says, motioning to get the bartender’s attention.

  “Yea, what can I get ya?” the older gentleman asks.

  “Yea, let me get a gin and tonic.”

  The man turns and grabs a plastic bottle of g
in and pours at least a triple shot into a tall glass. It might be cheap, but you sure get a lot of it.

  All the dancers’ attention is now focused on the three well-dressed men in suits seated at the bar, and the other patrons don’t like that.

  A young cat with a mouth full of gold teeth and his boy, who would both typically be out hustling on a night like this, eyeball Cicero.

  Cicero notices, and politely flashes the nickel-plated forty-four in the shoulder holster under his blazer. Heat has the tendency to defrost cold stares.

  Any other night Cicero might have a gunfight on his hands, because Kansas Citians thrive on respect: for many, it’s all they have. But the two punks in Royals jackets are slipping tonight. They’re weaponless, so they change their tune and look away from the clean three at the bar. After a few more tips, they leave, pissed off. Cicero remains on guard, however. These young cats are the type to return and light the house up like the Fourth of July.

  Hip-hop music rocks as Kam, Cicero, and Pete have several drinks and take a number of quick tequila shots, adding to their buzzes from earlier.

  Lyrics from a local artist are powerful and sincere.

  “Blastin,’ only what the red dot pinpoints. Floor the pedal, then blow dro rolled in thin joints.”

  Starting to really feel the effects, Pete rises from his barstool and asks, “Hey, where’s the fucking john? I gotta piss like a Russian race horse.”

  Cicero laughs and says, “Man, it’s down the hall and to the left.”

  Pete exits the room and when he does, Cicero reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a little off-white eyedropper. He quickly deposits two clear drops into Pete’s gin and tonic and waits for his return while Kam gets up and slides a five into his favorite’s garter belt.

  After draining the weasel, Pete returns feeling like a new man, and immediately walks over to the redhead and places a twenty-dollar bill in her thong.

  “Thank you, baby,” she says as she rubs his rough face and begins to wiggle her thin frame.

  Pete smiles at her like a schoolboy, then slowly saunters back toward the bar. He takes a big swig of his drink, dribbling some down his chin.

  “Yea! This place is okay with me,” he tells Cicero, who grins at him. “Hey, so which one does the thing with the honey?”

  “Oh, none of them, she’s in the V.I.P. room,” Cicero responds.

  “Well, fuck, that’s where we need to be!”

  They both laugh.

  Cicero checks his watch, it’s two thirty-seven a.m.

  “Okay, cool. Let’s go,” Cicero says before dropping a fifty-spot for their drinks.

  Cicero motions to Kam and he leaves his little stripper as they all walk back down the stairs. Pete is noticeably woozier than the other two, and he nearly falls down the steps before Cicero lassos him.

  “Whoa! You okay, Petey Pete?” he asks while chuckling.

  Trying to regain his composure, Pete answers, “Yea, I’m okay. I just had, you know, maybe one too many.”

  “Man, you’re fucked up. You sure you still want to fuck with the V.I.P. room?”

  “Hell yea! Shit yea!” Pete convincingly slurs. His vision is becoming blurry.

  “Okay, come on, it’s in the basement,” adds Cicero.

  “Man, don’t be throwin’ up in my ride,” warns Kam.

  They slowly make their way down the two flights of stairs to the first floor, then hook a right past the bar and another right past the pool table. In mid stride, Pete blacks out, nearly busting his head on the corner pocket on his way to the rug.

  “Damn, he’s fucked up,” one older Mexican billiards player quips with a heavy accent. “Bartender, give me whatever he’s drinking.”

  He and his friend start laughing.

  “El gringo stupido,” his dirty friend mumbles under his breath before taking a sip of his Dos Equis. “Que idioso.”

  Kam and Cicero carefully lift Pete off the floor. Kam reaches over and opens a door to the right, which leads down to a dark set of rickety wooden stairs.

  It’s pitch black and impossible to see, but they know their way around down here. After getting down the stairs they walk about twenty-five feet through a lengthy hallway before reaching a reinforced steel door.

  Kam removes Pete’s arm from around his shoulder and opens the door, exposing a large empty windowless room made entirely of concrete on all sides. A sewer drain and a gray folding chair sit in the middle.

  Kam props up Pete’s limp body, mouth unhinged and all, on the chair, as Cicero shuts the heavy metal door behind them.

  One light bulb hangs from the ceiling in the center. It’s cold and quiet.

  Kam removes Pete’s suit jacket and tosses it to the floor. Then rip. Rip. Rip. He tears Pete’s white shirt down the middle, buttons popping off. His hairy flabby chest barely moves with each breath. Cicero sips a cognac and stares at Pete, whose eyes are shut tight.

  In a devilish manner, Kam grins as he pulls the honey-filled bear from the brown paper bag.

  He removes the plastic from the top and, after twisting it open, begins to squeeze the sweet sticky substance all over Pete’s passed-out body.

  “I can’t wait to see this mothafucka’s face when he wakes up,” Kam says in a whisper, then giggles.

  Side to side, Pete’s eyes roll in his head. He’s in deep sleep, and the mechanism that controls rapid eye movement has kicked in. Quite possibly, he’s dreaming of the beautiful redhead upstairs. That he and her are on a hot sandy beach in the middle of the Pacific Ocean drinking daiquiris and tanning.

  Slap!

  “Wake the fuck up, bitch,” Kam says in a sinister tone. His open palm sticks to Pete’s viscous face.

  Slap! He strikes him again and Pete’s body jolts and his eyelids lift.

  “What the, what the hell is goin’ on?” Pete mumbles. “Where am I?”

  “Welcome to the V.I.P. room, Petey Pete,” Cicero says.

  Feeling his body covered in a strange element, Pete reaches to wipe his face but finds that Kam has bound his hands together behind him with rope, and his feet have been tied to the drain beneath him.

  “Hey. Hey. Hey, what the fuck is goin’ on here?” Pete yells, regaining consciousness. “What the fuck is this?”

  Cicero gazes at him from across the room, then slowly steps over to him, getting just inches from his face, looking at him eye to eye.

  “You know what this is, Pete,” says Cicero. “This is the end.”

  Pete’s eyes grow huge. His pulse quickens. Sweat forms in tiny beads upon his protruding brow, then descend down the sides of his dark crow’s feet.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Cicero?! Untie me!” Pete says, breathing heavily.

  Cicero takes a step back and swigs his drink. Kam’s smile has yet to leave.

  “I know you killed my father, Pete. I’ve always known it.”

  “Bullshit! Jimmy had your father whacked!”

  “No, Pete,” Cicero says in a calm voice. “I remember being at my father’s gravesite for his funeral. You remember that day?”

  Pete is silent, and sweating profusely.

  “Well, I do. I remember I threw up when they began to lower my father’s casket in the ground. And some woman, I guess a friend of my grandmother’s, led me to the family limousine and told me to wait there. The white part of the family wanted to keep me out of sight. Lucia and my mom didn’t even go to the funeral. But anyway, you all knew about us, all of us, I’m sure.”

  As Cicero pauses to take another drink, Kam slides out of the room and closes the large door behind him.

  “So I’m alone, sitting in the limo, and that’s when I overheard you talking outside. I’ll never forget those words, Pete. I heard you say, ‘That piece-of-shit Tony was something to break. We removed every finger, toe and hair follicle, and he still didn’t talk.’”

  Pete’s eyes search the room for a way to escape, then he struggles to free his hands. Recollections of that day are no longer f
oggy, and Pete knows the inevitable will occur, tonight, now, in the basement of a brothel in the heart of the ghetto.

  “And you know the worst part about my father’s funeral, Pete?” Cicero asks. “It was on my birthday. I haven’t celebrated it since.”

  At that moment, Pete realizes that only divine intervention can save him now.

  “Yea, Pete, when I finally got old enough, Jimmy told me the whole story,” Cicero lays out. “You know why he told me? Because I’m loyal. He saw in me what you dagos claim to be. You talk about loyalty, but I live it. I am it.”

  An ungodly squeal is suddenly heard coming from down the hall.

  Pete’s heart nearly jumps out of his chest, and he once again fights to free himself from the cold soundproof room. Once again, his efforts are without fruition.

  Cicero continues, “He told me how you and my father pulled a lick together, and how you felt cheated by his cut of the loot.”

  “Hey, fuck Jimmy, and fuck you too!” Pete screams forcefully, spit flying from his mouth.

  Another high-pitch squeal is heard, louder and closer.

  “No, Pete,” Cicero whispers and he goes to open the door. “Fuck you.”

  The door swings open and before Pete, standing four-feet high is a starving wild boar.

  “Oh my God!” Pete says under his breath as he looks at the razorback, then down at his chest, seeing the syrupy invitation covering his body from head to toe. “Holy fucking shit!”

  Reddish-black bristles cover the grotesque beast’s meaty frame, as it squeals again. It’s a hairsplitting noise. And if it weren’t for Kam holding the pig at bay with a chain, it would have already thrown itself upon Pete.

  “Yea, Pete, this right here is my baby,” says Kam, speaking sluggishly and grinning, sounding like a fanatic. “I love this mothafucka.”

  Pete is petrified and Kam loves it.

  “I bet you’re wondering where an asshole like myself got such a fine specimen of an animal. I could tell you, Pete, but then I’d have to kill you.” Kam laughs. “Oh yea, we’re going to kill you, so I guess I can tell you.”

  “You fucking psychos!”

  Kam ignores his comment and continues. “Yea, Pete, I had just drove to Mexico and picked up three hundred pounds of green, and on the way back, we stopped in this little town in Texas.”