Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Danger stood at the corner outside the ring, arms folded, watching Havoc spar.
Q’s gym was jumping tonight. Word had gotten around about Havoc’s upcoming fight. The undefeated guy from VA was going up against the champ, and everybody wanted a front-row seat to see what that looked like in practice. Spectators lined the walls.
For a couple of minutes, Havoc roughed up his opponent. This kid, who had decided to step into the ring, showed a lot of heart, but he was simply no match for Havoc’s heavy hands. They circled each other. Havoc threw a punch the kid blocked, and the kid then countered.
“Since when do we keep playing with our food? You’d better eat!” Q yelled from the sidelines.
Havoc stepped up, and the kid swung wildly with his left hand, missing Havoc’s face. Just as Danger predicted, Havoc threw a powerful left hook and knocked his opponent on his ass. The kid got back up after a couple of seconds, and the fight continued.
“You lookin’good, my boy!” Danger yelled out.
“Whatever, lil’ nigga, I want you next,” Havoc shot back, grinning through his mouthpiece.
Danger laughed, eyes fixed on Havoc’s footwork. There was a time he would have been right beside him. He was the only person who could realistically beat Havoc in the ring, but those days were long gone. Thanks to his father’s sick and twisted mind games, he’d never wear boxing gloves again.
Wham! Wham!
Every single fist that landed felt like waves crashing into Danger. The force knocked him to the floor with a loud thud, landing face first in the piss-brown carpet. His left eye was swollen, and it would probably be black by the morning.
Hamp had been making them fight for hours, and Danger was tired of being a punching bag. Tired of fighting his own brother like he’s a nigga off the streets. Tired of explaining to his grandmother that he fell or bumped into the wall when things got carried away.
After a few moments, he propped himself up on his elbow. Long, red welts lined his face between the streaks of his tears. This was the first time they ever fought without boxing gloves.
“Get up! Get up! Earn yo’ respect,” Big Hamp shouted like a madman, eyes bloodshot red.
By now, Havoc had backtracked to the corner of the room, a crimson red trail of blood leaking from his nose onto his Batman pajamas. His eyes bored into Danger, not with anger but with pity, as if he were begging him to stay down.
Danger didn’t want to hurt his brother, but he didn’t want to face his father’s hand either.
When would his mother be home? He hated when she would leave them in the house with him now. She used to be Danger’s favorite person, but now he saw her as a monster.
Get up! Get yo’ ass up, boy! Stop all that crying. I ain’t raising no damn punks! You’re over there with your grandma reading all those books. Thinking you’re so damn smart,” Big Hamp snarled at him.
Danger tried to stand up, but he stumbled back down. He could no longer see out of his left eye.
After a few seconds of watching Danger try to get up, Hamp stomped in front of him. He took a sip from his Colt 45 bottle and poured the remaining 40 oz (about 1.18 L) all over Danger.
Danger’s body shook as the warm liquid soaked through his clothes.
“Dadddd! Stop! Please…” Danger begged, as tears slid down his cheeks like hot wax.
His watery eyes found Havoc in the corner.
“You got five seconds to get up, or Ima beat yo ass myself.”
Danger flinched. “I-I... can’t, he’s bigger than me.”
“So what? You still got a lil fight in you, don’t you?”
Danger answered him, “No.”
Havoc’s eyes gleamed with surprise.
“Finish him off. Since he wanna cry like a lil bitch, show me that you wanna be a fucking champion.”
“No,” Havoc said in a voice just above a whisper, eyes trained on the floor.
“No, what?” Hamp was in front of him now, hovering over him like a wolf.
Havoc lifted his head. “I said no…sir...” More bass was added to his voice.
Hamp chuckled. “Oh, y’all little niggas think this shit is a game? I got something for that!” He snatched Danger off the floor with one hand, then jacked Havoc up with the other.
He made them face each other, then pulled his thick leather belt out of his jeans.
“Since y’all want to disobey me. Let’s see who cracks first.”
Danger blinked.
Havoc was leaning out over the ropes in front of him, sweat running down his face, grinning like he hadn’t just knocked somebody out.
“I can’t keep practicing with light work,” Havoc said, gesturing toward the ring with his glove. “Come on.”
Danger’s fist clenched, then unclenched.
“Nah.”
“Just hold the mitts.”
Danger looked at the ring for a moment. Then sighed, slipped off his jacket, and ducked through the ropes. He knew if nobody else in the gym could get him ready for this match, he could.
The crowd that had been dispersing stopped and turned around. The infamous Malone brothers in the ring together wasn’t something you wanted to miss.
Havoc smirked, tapping his gloves. “Let’s go, pretty boy.”
“I’ll show you a pretty boy.” Danger slid the miss onto his hands and raised them, settling into a stance his body still remembered.
Havoc stepped up. “Ready when you are.”
“One. Two.”
Havoc’s fist moved like lightning, smacking the mitt.
Danger read him the only way someone who’d grown up across from him could.
Anticipating the half step before the right hand.
Danger pushed back, swinging his right arm and Havoc’s shoulder, catching him off guard.
They worked more combinations, and by the time they wrapped it up, they were both breathing hard, and the gym had gone quiet.
They sat on the sidelines together, watching Q run a group of school-age kids through drills. Danger was glad to see the kids taking it seriously.
“Babyyyyyyy.”
Danger heard her before he saw her. Nia came through the gym door strutting as if she owned it.
Havoc got up from his seat, pulled Nia into his arms, and kissed her.
Nia cut her eyes at Danger over Havoc’s shoulder. “Hello to you, too, Dmitri.”
“Sup, sis.” He kept his face straight, “How ya sister doing? Tell her to call me.”
Nia pulled back from Havoc just enough to level a look at Danger. “Leave her alone. You’ve got enough going on with Chyna.”
“Chyna and I are strictly business.”
“Mmhm.” She went towards the kitchen area in the back of the gym.
Nia and Havoc had been dating for so long that Nia had become a natural part of Danger’s life. They took the phrase “High School Sweethearts” to the extreme. Since meeting in the 9th grade, they had been glued at the hip. They shared a bond that Danger could only hope to share with someone one day.
A few minutes later, Nia had returned with a container full of food, which she handed to Havoc. She always made sure to bring some food when she visited the gym to keep up with his demanding appetite for training.
“Sorry, D.” Nia stuck out her green tongue ring. “None for you.”
“I’ll just swing by your mama’s then.”
Nia stuck up her middle finger, then slid onto Havoc’s lap.
Danger got up from his chair, slid on his jacket, and walked to the door. “I’m about to head out. Gotta meet the inspector at the building. I’ll see you tomorrow for Sunday dinner at my house.”
Havoc nodded, walked over to him, and dapped him up. “Love you, Baby D.”
“Love you too, Hampton.” Danger called him by his real name to get under his skin.
Danger walked out of the gym and prepared for the second half of his day.
He was asleep before midnight, which almost never happened.
His phone pulled him out of it just past two. He grabbed it from the nightstand without fully opening his eyes. He saw the screen, eleven missed calls from Havoc, all within the last forty minutes.
He called back. Havoc answered immediately.
“It’s ma.” His voice held a different tone than normal. “Get to the house…”
“Ok.”
He disconnected the call. Dressed quickly. Slipped on his shoes, and He was out the door in three minutes flat.
He drove his truck like a NASCAR driver, running lights, stop signs… everything. His usual twenty-minute drive turned into eleven. He told himself that it was nothing. A fall, maybe. Something that would look smaller once he got there and saw it with his own eyes.
Then his mother’s house came into view, and he saw the lights.
A dozen cruisers, flashing red and blue across the lawns and the faces of neighbors who’d come out in their pajamas to watch. Crime scene tape stretched across the yard like a bright yellow seam. Cops everywhere, on the porch, on the lawn, pacing inside the house as they lived there.
He threw the truck into park in the middle of the street.
“Sir, need you to back up!” The white, uniformed police officer shouted toward Danger, who made a beeline for him.
Danger’s fist turned to stone. “This is my ma’ house! Let me through!”
“Sir.”
“Let him in!” Havoc’s voice cut through the chaos.
Danger’s eyes trailed to Havoc, who stood off to the side, talking to someone Danger assumed was a detective by the man's clothing.
In his line of work, he learned to sniff out a detective a mile away.
Why would a detective be here, and why would Havoc be talking to him? Unless...
Something in his chest caved in as he walked over to Havoc. He couldn’t wrap his head around what the fuck was going on. He knew this wasn’t drug-related; when they purchased the house, they made a vow that that part of their life would not touch his mother’s new, clean lifestyle.
The detective looked at him, then at Havoc. “Give me a call if you think of anything.” He slid a white card to Havoc and walked back toward the house.
Danger watched him go. Then looked at Havoc.
Havoc’s eyes were wet. In twenty-some years, Danger could count on one hand how many times he’d seen that. The number got even smaller if you didn’t count the nights in their father’s house.
“Ma’s gone...”
Danger exhaled all the air from his lungs. The world around him began to spin. His hand shot out and grabbed the nearest thing, the hood of a parked car, and he held onto it like the ground was moving under him because it was.
“Nah..” The word came out broken, barely a word at all.
He stayed like that for a moment, head down, one hand on the car. Havoc put a hand on his back, and he let it stay there. Just for that moment. Just those few seconds when it was still okay not to be alright.
Then he stood up straight.
Take one breath, then let it out.
He looked back at the house. The yellow tape. The officers are moving in and out. The light is still on in the upstairs window. He shifted to the front door, analyzing the broken glass and the bullet holes, as if he were trying to piece together a puzzle.
“What happened?” Danger gritted his teeth.
Havoc watched him for a minute before answering. “Robbery. At least that’s what they’re saying. From what they can tell, money and jewelry... everything stripped clean. Bodies everywhere.”
“Bodies?” Danger questioned.
“Yeah.”
Danger nodded once.
And then, the front door opened, and two men in dark uniforms wheeled a gurney down the porch steps. A black body bag on top of it. Another one right behind it. Everything Havoc had just said real in a way the words alone hadn’t managed.
Danger watched until they loaded it into the van.
Then he turned to his brother.
“Who found them?”
“Neighbors heard shots. Welfare check found the door kicked in.”
“Cameras?”
“Street cam on the corner. Detectives are gonna pull the footage.”
“Whoever did this…” He stopped. Started again. “They’re not gonna get to enjoy that shit.”
“Way ahead of you. I already put my ears to the streets.” Havoc said quietly.
“Good.”
Danger turned back towards the house one more time. Come tomorrow, he would feel it. But tonight, he was about to get his hands dirty.