Page 131 of Wings of Ebony
No closed courtroom doors.
No expensive lawyers.
No whispered conversations.
No under-the-table deals.
No power.
No privilege.
This is justice the block is gon’ see.
If he hears me he doesn’t respond. He keeps his eyes shut. It’s so funny how hard people work to not see their wrongs. This dude won’t even look.
But that’s alright.
Soon.
I check my watch. TV and news crews thought I was joking when I called and said I’d caught the leader of Litto’s crew. Somebody must have believed me, because in minutes it was all over blogs and calls started coming in. I had told them all the same—meet me in East Row.
Justice is going down here.
I told the reporters to expect a big bust going down at Dezignz, too, where Julius is holed up. He was freaking out by the time I called. He had said the guys in the warehouse were starting to get suspicious, but he was able to keep them there under the threat that Litto himself would be there any moment.
It probably helped that I put the General on speakerphone, and with some fiery prodding—literally—he said just what I told him to. Nobody budged after that. I had told Julius on the low to just sit tight and wait for the Feds. And that thanks to recorders from Kid, Bo, Ole Jesse, and the others, plus what the General ’bout to admit to the world here, there’ll be enough evidence to lock him up for life.
His head hangs and the crowd around us grows. A woman walks up holding a poster with a picture of a boy about Tasha’s age.
“I saw all that stuff online.” She wears a neon yellow shirt thatmatches the poster. Two years are scrawled on the shirt, with a hyphen in between. “So it’s true?” she asks. “That’s him?”
I nod, my chest aching at all the blood shed here from this dude’s hate. I embrace her and she smudges away a tear from under her sun shades.
“Thanks for being here,” I say.
“Thank you for bringing him down. He been terrorizing East Row for years.” Her voice cracks. “Enough is enough.” She rocks back and forth on her feet, humming, clutching her sign, holding in her pain.
The General’s eyelids are still closed. “You never told me, why… why you hate us so much.”
It’s not a real question. There’s not an answer that’ll make sense or lessen the blow. But I can’t shake wanting to hear what he’d say. A group of reporters, cameras on their shoulders, move our way and he parts his chapped lips.
“I don’t have anything to say to you people.”
You people.“You will do as you’re told willingly,” I whisper the words he’d told me back in Ghizon, “or you’ll beforcedto do as you’re told.” Now the ball’s in my court. I slip the vial of clear bubbly liquid from my pocket that I stole from Luke forever ago and shake it in his face. His eyes grow as I drip the tiniest bit of the truth serum on his lip.
He tries to spit it out, but it’s too late. His pupils dilate and he’s somewhere between lackadaisical and pissed. I force another drizzle down his throat. People stare, gasp, chatter, but no one stops me.
“I asked you a question.”
He speaks between gritted teeth. “It’s funny, you know, when Istumbled on that island with my buddies decades ago, they were stupid. They wanted to try talking to the natives. Not me. I stayed hidden in the foliage. That’s how I got out of there alive. I came back here and tried living a normal life. Joined the service, worked my way up to a one-star. But some Black, affirmative action-type two-star did me in. He took my place. I never liked Coloreds, not one bit. That two-star had heard some things he shouldn’t have about my business and told people that didn’t need to know. He got me discharged, the bastard. When they cut me loose from the military, I told myself to move on. But I couldn’t forget that cold winter and those dirty people with abilities that shouldn’t be possible. I wanted it when I’d first seen it, but I didn’t have means then. But oh, it’s amazing the connections you make working for the government in Intelligence. The friends. People who owe you favors. The things you can get away with.”
He laughs to himself and a reporter tips closer, holding a microphone under his mouth.
“It’s not hard watering a seed in a mind that’s already planted it. So I went back to the island when I got out of the service and sold myself better than any resume ever could to that greedy Chancellor. I told him I’d make sure the Americans never came for his island again. And if even a whisper of those brown-skinned people he killed off surfaced, I’d take care of it. It’d be a pleasure.” He smiles. “And the Chancellor couldn’t say yes fast enough. He was hungry before I met him, but he was even hungrier then. All I wanted in return was to be Bound to magic to do my business here. No Colored would ever out-rank me again, in stars or power. I pulled my gang together, fashioned myself a new surname—Litto—andbuilt more wealth and power on these streets than you’ll ever see in your lifetime, girl.”
“But back in Ghizon, how did you”—the words are bile in my mouth—“rise in the ranks there?”
“The Chancellor fashioned that paste for my skin to take on that grayish color, strapped me up with plenty of Yoheem Elixir to metabolize my genetics, replenish my fitness levels. Same stuff Patrol takes to keep them in youthful shape. Same stuff the Chancellor takes to keep his cells regenerating at the rate of a twenty-year-old. The man’s, like, a hundred and twenty-five years old, you do realize?”
