Invincible: A Novel Read online

  Clips added, “Regg said you was a stand-up thoroughbred kinda nigga, but even a thoroughbred can get on the wrong track. We just here to make sure if you need a banga you get a banga. Before lights out let a nigga know if you need something to eat or whatever, homie. We respect that work you put in and the way you carried yourself in the yard. It’s been a long time since I seen a nigga man up to that many niggaz and be ready to get it in.”

  Frankie nodded his head. “Yeah, that was some real brave-heart shit, my nigga.” And he gave Jake a dap.

  Jake was thinking that the smart thing to do was to be humble and ask one of them to watch his back for a few while he caught some z’s. But what if they were the ones who wanted to kill him? He would be finished real quick. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t; what was he to do? And before he could come up with any kind of answer, he felt something hot going into his back.

  Frankie slid a six-and-a-half-inch blade into him. He had been hit real decent from the back and Jake knew it. How could he let this happen? Clips tried to catch him in the face, but unlike the first blow, Jake saw this one coming and put his hand up just in time to get it in his palm instead of his face. Jake was pulsing with adrenaline, enabling him to kick Clips in the ribs and nuts. But despite his efforts, he got hit twice more in the back by Frankie. Jake felt his legs go out from under him, and he fell to the floor. That didn’t stop the two killers from getting their thing off. They started stomping him out, leaving Jake broken and bloody. Then Frankie put on the finishing touch: stabbing Jake in the top of his head with one of the razor-sharp blades.

  That was all Jake’s body could take. He saw a blinding white light all around, then nothing.

  GANGSTAS RIDE

  Reggie flipped out when the news about the attack on his friend reached his dorm. Word had spread through the jail that the hit was brutal even for jail standards, and Reggie felt even worse after hearing that the niggaz that did it used his name to get close enough to make Jake relax his guard. Reggie knew both Frankie and Clips, and neither one of them was down with the Northside Boys. He couldn’t figure out why they did what they did to Jake or how they had the balls to use his name, but he sure was going to find out on the way to nighttime rec.

  Reggie had no idea what he was in store for at rec call, nor were any of the COs prepared for what was about to go down. The Northside Boys had decided to fold their hands, bowing down to the mysterious 300 Crew. Some people said there were only ten members in the jail, others thought there had to be three hundred of them running all the worldly goods in and out of the facility. Whoever they were, the 300 Crew supplied sneakers, knives, cellphones, porn mags, whatever you needed. Nobody ever fucked them over because instead of hurting you, they would use their outside connects to get to a family member or a significant other. It was said that each member was capable of killing a man with his bare hands and over the past ten years they averaged three hundred bodies a year, which led to them being named the 300 Crew. No one knew who they where. They had allegedly each gotten a life sentence for murder, extortion, or kidnapping and not one of them snitched. Some say they are stronger now that they are locked down and are making more than a hundred thousand dollars a week. The shit sounded far-fetched and unbelievable.

  As soon as Reggie got to the yard he was approached by Lil Red and Dollar. Red started off the convo. “Yeah, nigga, look like ya man headed to heaven or hell. Heard they had to bring him outta there on a stretcher.”

  “So y’all niggaz is hiring mu’fuckaz to put your work in for you now? And y’all had them niggaz get close off the strength of my name,” Reggie accused. “I guess y’all niggaz is pussy after all. Both y’all cowards can suck my dick, and I would gladly see any of you two faggots in the bathroom—hands, knife fight, whatever—but one of y’all niggaz got to see me.”

  Lil Red got real hype. “You and I can play the bathroom right now, Regg. I’ll murder yo bitch ass. You ain’t hard motherfucka.”

  Dollar hopped in, told his brother to chill, then said to Regg, “It’s like this, homie, that shit that happened today wasn’t personal, it was business. I know that’s your homeboy but he fucked up a lot of money that belonged to us.” Dollar went on to explain, “If he hadn’t pulled that stunt earlier in the house, Ike and Cory wouldn’t have said shit to him. There wouldn’t of been no fight, none of that tough-guy shit in the yard earlier. My boys would have been on point and we wouldn’t have lost all that money when the turtles flipped the house. Besides that he had it coming to him for trying to be the hardest nigga in the world! And that’s not the only reason I’m approaching you. I came to give you a heads-up.” After being sure he had Reggie’s attention, Dollar continued, “The Northside Boys and the Spanish Crowns are both going to attack T.M.B. Both gangs are putting a lot of work in for the 300 Crew and getting paid well for it. You guys are in the way all the time so either you get down or lay down. It’s a lot of cash to be made so I suggest you think about it very carefully.”

  “Ain’t nothing to think about,” Reggie said. “Hell no, T.M.B is T.M.B. and we ain’t getting down with nobody. If you and the Crowns decide to set it, be my guest. Matter of fact,” he added, “let’s get it in right now.” Reggie punctuated his statement by running straight at Lil Red and Dollar, but what Regg didn’t know was that the 300 had got at more than half of his crew and paid them off to fall back. That left Reggie left to set it with only about ten or twelve soldiers to scrap with him. They didn’t have a chance, but all of T.M.B. that didn’t take the pay went out like the warriors they were. Regg never made it to Lil Red or Dollar. Instead he was swarmed by a bunch of Northside and Spanish Crown soldiers. None of the members of T.M.B. got done like they did Jake but they all received official beat-downs. They had to take solace in the fact that at least there weren’t any murders; they would all live to fight another day. The turtle squad came and shut the mini riot down, but the word was spread all over the jail that the takeover was official: The 300 Crew was running everything. As the turtles were bringing out all of the participants in plastic wire cuffs en route to the hole, all Regg could think about was how pussy the Northside, the Crowns, and T.M.B. members that sold out were. What kind of crew would work for another crew? He wondered how much money the 300 offered them, and why.

  Reggie would get his answers soon enough, and he swore to get revenge on all T.M.B. niggaz who sold him out, which was most of them. But the last thing he thought about before falling to sleep in his cell was, I wonder how J.B. doing.

  AWAKE

  Hospital room, January 2010

  “Hey good-lookin’, what’s cooking?” Nurse Brenda Knight said in a tone that sounded as if she was about to sing. She wasn’t looking at him when she said it; it was just what she always said to him when she entered his room for the first time that day. She had a special little thing she would say to all her patients. The lady who shared the room with Jake would have gotten a “Heeey, Boo-Boo, how are you?” if Jake hadn’t scared the life out of her when he replied.

  “I don’t know but I’m hungry as hell,” he whispered in a groggy voice that resembled the voice of the Godfather on his deathbed. Jake was even surprised by the way his voice sounded. It felt like his chest was caving in when he tried to clear his throat. His senses kicked into overdrive; his nose knew that hospital scent all too well and his eyes focused in on the young lady who had asked him the question.

  “Oh my God,” Nurse Knight exclaimed. She poured some water in his cup and raised it to Jake’s mouth. After he got a few sips down the nurse ran out of the room saying something about being back in a second with a doctor and some other mumbo jumbo about Jesus and a few other things Jake couldn’t quite make out.

  Jake had no idea what the fuck was wrong with him or why he was in this hospital room. The last time he had awoken in a hospital was after a surgery on his tonsils, but something told him this was different and much more serious. He tried to move his extremities and quickly realized that his body was we
ak. His left hand felt numb, and he couldn’t move his legs. Jake did manage to move his right hand and discovered how thin his arms, hands, and body felt to the touch. Then he reached up and felt his face. He had a beard that felt like a bush. He touched his head, which was full of hair—far from the baldy he loved to keep clean. He wondered what the fuck had happened to him. When the pretty nurse came back in with a doctor, Jake immediately shot his questions at the doctor, wanting to find out what was wrong with him and what had happened to him.

  “Calm down, Mr. Billings,” the doctor told him. “I’m Dr. Jenson, and you have been in a coma for about two years.”

  Jake couldn’t remember anything, and the story about the coma sounded kind of suspect to him. “Okay, Doc, how did I manage to get into this coma you say I’ve been in?” Jake questioned.

  The doctor removed a clipboard from the end of the bed and read through a few pages near the beginning of the thick binder. “Well, Mr. Billings, I’ve not always been your doctor, but according to your records, you were stabbed and beaten into a coma while you were incarcerated.”

  Still not really believing anything the doctor was saying, Jake asked, “I feel so weak, will I be okay?”

  After Dr. Jenson gave Jake a thorough examination, he reported his findings. “Your left hand will never regain feeling, but everything else seems to be fine considering you haven’t moved a muscle in two years. You are going to have to go to rehab to get the rest of your body moving again, but I think the prognosis is very favorable.”

  Jake thought about all Dr. Jenson had told him and asked, “How come I don’t remember anything about the injury?”

  “It’s fairly common for a patient not to remember certain things after awakening from a long coma. Sometimes the brain blocks out certain things for reasons of its own.”

  “Will I get my memory back, Doctor?”

  “I can’t say for certain that you will, but I can tell you that a great deal of patients who suffer memory loss like yours do get it back.”

  Who the hell could put me in a coma? What was I in jail for? Do I have to go back? Is the case opened or closed? All these thoughts raced through his head.

  Nurse Knight spoke to him in a soft voice. “I know you have a lot of questions you want answered, and in due time they will be. But for now,” she said, “you should really try to get some rest. You will be filled in on everything later.” The nurse felt bad for Jake. There was a lot to digest after waking up from a two-year sleep, but he should be thanking the good Lord. Not many people get a second chance, Brenda thought.

  Brenda was a twenty-eight-year-old lady who had been a nurse for seven years. She felt being a nurse was one of the best jobs in the world, second only to being a doctor, which she would have been if she had the money for medical school. Since she didn’t, she grinded extra hard and prayed that the good Lord would see fit for her to make enough money to pay for college. She would start in about a year and a half, if everything worked out. It wasn’t looking so good, though, with her mom being sick and her nine-year-old boy having Attention Deficit Disorder, but Brenda believed the man upstairs could fix all things big and small. After all, He’d already delivered a stand-up guy into her life.

  PLOTS AND PLANS

  January 2008

  Mary-beth Jenkins and Phillip Rosenberg were sitting in the back of his 760 BMW. Mary-beth and Phil had been business partners and lovers for so many years that Phil felt there was hardly a line between the two. Mary-beth, on the other hand, understood the boundaries. Phil was 5′11″, and while his face and body looked like a young Richard Grieco’s, his attitude and swagger were more like Donald Trump’s.

  “Did you take care of the J.B. situation today?”

  “Yes, honey, he should be on the way out as we speak.” Phil let the lie fly off his tongue as if it was the truth.

  ———

  Franklin Butler was being held in the county jail for attempted murder and kidnapping. Frank’s case wasn’t run-of-the-mill. He was a fifth-degree black belt and taught the art at the local dojo alongside his brother Mike. Frank taught on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Mike took over on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It was Frank’s day off, and he decided to go say what’s up to his brother and hang out with him. It had been awhile since they’d just sat around and kicked it with each other. All of the students were gone, and Frank had a forty-dollar-bottle of Hennessy in hand. It had been at least two years since the brothers had shared a bottle of cognac. If Frank wasn’t married to the ultimate stank bitch who kept tabs all the time, he would have invited Mike to go out to a club with him like they used to, but that was definitely out of the question with Laura always threatening to divorce him over any little thing that pissed her off.

  When Frank got to the door, what he heard made his knees buckle. He would have known that female moan anywhere. Then there was his brother’s voice.

  “Do you like this dick?”—in between deep breaths—“Tell me how much you like this dick.”

  Frank opened the door as quietly as he could and walked up the stairs of the dojo. When he made it to the top, there they were: Mike had his wife Laura bent over doggy-style.

  As Frank tiptoed toward them, Laura must have heard a squeak from one of the floorboards. She looked toward the noise and Mike followed her lead, but it was too late. Frank’s leg was already in the air and it came smashing down on his brother’s back. A cracking sound and Mike’s scream let Frank know his brother would most likely be crippled for life. Mike and Laura were stuck together like two dogs in heat, but Frank wasn’t finished yet. He pulled his brother off his wife and threw him out the window all in one motion. Next, without even thinking about what he was doing, Frank chopped his wife across the throat. Laura collapsed to the floor. Then he took a handful of her hair and dragged her unconscious body down both flights of steps, out the dojo, and to his car. He stood her up and punched her in the face so hard she awakened, and then he hit her again to put her back to sleep. He threw her in the car and walked over to his brother who was laid out on his stomach with a split forehead and plenty of broken bones.

  Frank turned him over on his back and grabbed Mike by both feet. What he did next was unthinkable. He spread his brother’s legs apart and proceeded to stomp his dick and balls with five of the hardest stomps he could deliver. Unfazed by the damage he’d caused, Frank left his brother lying there, not knowing or caring if he was dead or alive, and walked back to his car. He climbed into the front seat of his Ford and said to his wife, “This is going to be the last ride we ever take together.” Luckily for her, he only made it four blocks before the cops pulled him over. Somebody in a passing car had seen his brother flying out the window and called the cops.

  When Frank called Phil to represent him, Phil thought he could beat the kidnapping charge—that was a bullshit charge—but the attempted murder was a different story altogether. Even if Phil could manage to win it all, he knew there was no way Frank would be able to raise enough money to pay him to do so. The fact that Phil had gone to school with Frank and played pick-up basketball with him on Tuesdays didn’t amount to jack shit in Phil’s eyes. Phil thought about taking the case pro bono but after giving it a second thought, he had to be paid, and not getting paid was not in his character. He held off on responding, keeping Frank anxious for damn near a week.

  When Frank was called down for a lawyer’s visit and saw that it was Phil, his face lit up. It was the first time he felt like things may be all right since the night of the incident. Phil cut straight to the chase. “Frank, you don’t have the money to beat this case and if you don’t have a lawyer on a case like this you lose everything. The least amount of years you’re looking at is twenty, and that’s if you’re lucky, but I’m here today to help you out. If you do me a favor … I’ll do a favor for you. Get my drift?”

  Frank nodded his head. He had a feeling, though, that whatever it was Phil had in mind was going to probably get him into even more shit but he had no
choice.

  Phil looked around before scribbling three words on the notepad he had in front of him.

  TAKE HIM OUT

  Then he lifted the page and there was a picture of Jake. Phil ripped up the note paper with the message and looked directly into Frank’s eyes. “Do you know this man?”

  “I’ve seen ’im.”

  “If you can do that for me,” Phil said, “I can get you off scot-free. I promise! The judge and DA you’ll be in front of are close friends of mine.”

  Frank thought about the proposition. He knew that Phil was a grimy bitch. He could have helped him without making him commit another crime. I went to school with this cracker, he thought. I play ball with him yet he wants me to take a nigga out for him before he’ll give me any help. He imagined getting out and following Phil home after a game and snapping his fucking neck. Then he said, “Yeah, I can make that happen, Phil.”

  “Then you got yourself a lawyer,” Phil said.

  When it was all said and done, Frank felt this was his lucky day because Phil had shown him a picture of a dude that was in the same house as he was. Frank had watched the man handle two big dudes from the Northside clique with ease. Then he watched him go to the yard and kick it with that kid Regg from T.M.B. After that, the kid was ready to go head up with the leaders of the Northside. It was easy for Frank to figure out a quick little plan—just go to the Northside Boys and offer his services to take out Jake. Frank felt a little bad that he was going to have to take someone out, but if that was what he had to do to be a free man again, so be it.

  Frank went back upstairs to where he was housed and called his man Clips to his bunk. “Yo, let me do your job and bring the book cart to all the houses, I got to holla at somebody upstairs for something,” he said.

  Clips replied, “Cool, my nigga, I was tired anyway. I’ll just tell the CO in the bubble that I’m sick and you’re gonna do the job for me.”

  Frankie delivered the books to all the houses as promised, and when he got to where Lil Red and Dollar were bunked he offered to take Jake out for them … for a light fee.