YNs

1994

The spider crawled to the fly. She played with it. Then, she started to take in the essence of the paralyzed flying insect. Dophilius Holmes swept away the spider and the web. He walked off his Wilmington, Delaware porch. He kept sweeping with a vigor and intensity usually reserved for circus acts or skilled marksmen.

He swept away leaves that had fallen freshly on the steps up to his walkup. At fifteen-years-old, he had accumulated enough cash to buy two Japanese economy cars (a black one for him, a silver Civic for his girl) and a necklace for his mother. His learner’s permit sat comfortably in his wallet.

He knew his dad didn’t like him running the streets but when he bought him a boat that sat in the back yard, he turned up his chin to his son’s activities in the neighborhood.

Holmes kept sweeping and he looked at his pager. It read “URGENT.” He put away the device and biked to the nearest bus stop. DART buses run on fifteen minute intervals. When the next one came, Holmes placed his BMX bike on the front rack of the bus.

He sat down and waited to go to the next stop which would get him to his destination at the hospital. Once he entered through the doors of the medical center, he met up with Dr. McRonald. Holmes took off his back pack and brushed off his sneakers. as the doctor closed the door to his office.

McRonald looked icy white, a contrast to the dark skin wrapped around Holmes’ physique.

“You gave me extra,” McRonald mentioned. He voiced it softly, almost tenderly. An envelope with $25,000 wrapped in plastic surfaced on his desk.

“You want to explain why I have an extra 5K in this envelope?”

“I must’ve done the math wrong,” Holmes spoke with nonchalance.

“‘You must’ve’—the count has to be exact.”

“Why didn’t you just keep it?”

“For what? Put it in the bank? Which they can track…buy my wife a ring…they love snooping for shiny stuff.”

“You could have just buried it for all this,” Holmes replied.

“Alright. We’re in this together. You have your foes on the street. They find themselves,” he motioned for Holmes to turn up his noise cancelling device. “They come to me in the ER. I’m not patching them up on purpose because we have a deal. A lot of people think doctors make top pay. Some of us do. But mainly, we’re paying students loans and trying to keep a mortgage and take care of our families. I want you to know, there’s already two bodies I could have saved. But this thing we’ve got going is something special.”

“So you called me over here for a quarter of what I owed you?”

“Exaclty, but here’s the thing…if we’re going to do business. It’s gotta be perfect. I can’t stash it in the floor boards or in the attic. I’ve gotta take it to the bank in twenty thousand dollar increments.”

“Okay, got it.”

“Did you do it on purpose? I know you’re in AP Calc, so you couldn’t have done it on purpose,” McRonald argued with himself.

“It’ll be in twenty thousand dollar increments.”

“Okay. Just keep the bodies rolling in and we can continue business.” They shook hands and McRonald’s pager sounded. Holmes took the street like a burst beer bottle shattered and leaving jagged shards. His resolve never wavered as he headed to the Boxwood Funeral Home in North Wilmington. Mr. Boxwood looked like an Easter Island monolith; his skin was so black. He had salt and pepper on the roof though. He could have driven his car but it was Tuesday and he just wanted to clean up and not have to worry about being stopped.

The funeral home looked immaculate and drab at the same time. The steps looked like cracked teeth showing an open and infamous smile. The place didn’t show a speck of dirt and the hearses looked like horses in the stable. People thought the vehicles appeared foreboding so Mr. Boxwood and his daughters ensured to park then in the back of the place.

No services had been held on this day. The time spent focused on restoring chemicals and addressing orders of caskets, urns, and making arrangements.

“You gave me twenty-five thousand dollars again,” Grayman Boxwood brought his voice up a bit at the end. “What is the issue, son? You I need to put this money in the bank in—-”

“Twenty thousand dollar increments.”

“You know but you don’t show….” Boxwood replied.

“I’ll have twenty thousand for you. Even,” Holmes mentioned.

“I was going to put it in one of our refrigerators but if something goes left and the people come after me, I’m not going to be able to explain the cash built up in those appliances….”

“Makes sense. Now, all I need for you to do is take the cash you do have and put it in the bank.”

“That’s what I’m saying, son. I have to put this amount in the bank every Thursday in order for the people not to get wise about what we’re doing. I get paid, you stay out of the Vernal Detention Center.”

“How many bodies have you already buried?” Holmes asked.

Boxwood looked up and then down. “Four.”

“This month?”

“This week.”

“Alright, then. I’ll keep it at twenty K just smooth it out, now,” Holmes spoke as cold as one of the cadavers under their feet. A handshake showed the contrast in skin color. He boarded the bus and biked his way home. Once he got to his bedroom, he pulled out his sneaker box full of tens of thousands of dollars. He let the money machine sift through the bills with a sound like cards shuffling. The ding finally came. He counted eighty-six thousand dollars.

He got another call on his beeper. This time it showed “READY.” He smirked. It was his girlfriend Tatalisha. He knew what that message meant. He then sprayed some smell goods and grabbed his pistol and hit the streets in his black Ac’ Legend. He turned up the radio and the air conditioning. He journeyed to her apartment. Once he got there, he knocked on the door three times and then another. The unlatching and unlocking sounded like knuckles cracking. The door swung open and a gorgeous girl the color of black sand emerged.

“Are you running scared, or are you running free?” He asked her.

She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Get in here, boy.”

After a brief smash out session of two minutes and thirty seconds, He returned to the street to see his other YNs on the corners clocking mad game. In three hours of roving through the neighborhoods, he looked at his watch and rolled over to his lieutenant, Hollis Verboten. He looked tallish and had chestnut brown skin and eyes that told a tale of street battles and pain. He was nineteen and studied business administration and hotel management at New Sweden University. He dressed in a fire red Nike jumpsuit.

The two of them dapped. “What are our numbers?” Verboten asked.

“The doc and the director got theirs.”

“Good. Good.”

“I have to test you, though….” Verboten mentioned.

“Alright.”

“You pass or fail on this one.”

“Bet.”

“How much do you need for a significant real estate deal? Something like an apartment complex?”

“You’re going to need at least ten thousand down and about six thousand a month if you want to have the best accommodations.”

“You passed. Once you graduate out of school and out of the streets, you’re going to be a good––”

A car rolled up and shots started ripping out of Glocks and only Verboten received hits. The car got stuck in traffic as people started screaming and running away from the scene. All those months at the shooting range would have to ring true in this instance. Holmes withdrew his round filled weapon as if it were a sword. He aimed at the tires. As the car could go nowhere, the occupants scurried like squirrels chasing acorns. They burst back but the driver and two passengers had been struck by Holmes’ consistent aim.

He pulled a mask over his face and ran up to each one and put a bullet in each of their brains. He then scampered off back to Verboten who was gushing out blood but was still stable.

“They got my arms, man!” he blurted out.

“It’s alright. I kept the doc’s mouth fed for moments just like this.”

After wrapping rags around Verboten, he packed him in the back of the Ac’.

He drove him to the hospital himself.

“If those vermin think their big homie isn’t in trouble, they’re going to find out soon,” Verboten spoke through clenched teeth. They arrived at the hospital.

“C’mon,” Holmes instructed. He clutched his boss and a few nurses had already come out with a wheel chair. Before he entered the emergency room, he met up with Holmes.

“Is this someone who needs assistance in the next world?”

“No, this is who I was talking about. He’s my boss.”

“Alright, I’ll do what I do.”

A few flecks of blood showed on Holmes’ right sleeve.

“You better get cleaned up. There are some scrubs in the room next to the OR.”

“Got it. Thanks.”

He removed his shirt and put on the clothing reserved for nurses and other medical staff. Holmes then went to his car. He drove back to his residence fuming. He pulled into the driveway and immediately found a bucket with water and soap and started wiping the leather interior which showed blood as well. After he had finished this task he went to his room and received an alert on his beeper.

“HES FINE”

A sigh ran through his body like a shudder from a hawk. He looked at the box of money. He never held what his couriers sold on the corners. He just had cash stacked up in his room. He went down to the liquor store called the funeral director from a payphone.

“Good evening this is the Boxwood and Daughters Mortuary and Crematorium. You kill ‘em and we chill ‘em and grill ‘em. How may I direct your call?” Boxwood secretary stated. Well, she didn’t actually say the last part, but it rolled through his mind nevertheless.

“Hey, Stacey.”

“Mr. Holmes, would you like to speak with Mr. Boxwood?”

“I would please.”

“One moment, thank you.”

Sweat beads gathered at his temples as he took off his sneakers. He found more blood on them.

“Mr. Holmes. I just saw the news. Not all of them got Death’s coattails.”

“Oh.” It was like an elevator dropped from the top floor to the garage in Holmes’ mind.”

“He survived the trauma to the brain and is now dangling on the cliff of life.”

“That’s what I need you to do. Make sure that you do the other funerals. Make them nice. I’ll handle the one that lived and you can set to work on him.”

“I thank you again, for the transaction,” Boxwood grinned.

“Any time.” Holmes hung up the payphone and felt his weapon. It wasn’t too cool then again the warmth did not interrupt his touch. He hopped back in his Japanese chariot and sped down the street with a vigor and focus of a helicopter pilot firing missiles in a combat zone.

He went back to the hospital in his car this time. He checked with McRonald.

“Hey, where’s the lone survivor?”

“He’s in the ICU, heavily guarded.”

“I only deal in flatlines. I’m going to need you to put a cocktail of strychnine, arsenic, and cyanide into his IV,” he mentioned in an icy tone to the doctor.

“That’s why you pay me. I’ll make it look like the strychnine was a stimulant, the arsenic a treatment for skin injury, and the cyanide to reduce surgical bleeding. It’s taken care of, young man.”

McRonald flashed a grin that made it look like he just won a hand by counting cards. Holmes whirled around and jingled the keys to his car. Dusk crept in like a phantom from the shadows of the summer night. As the fire in the sky sank lower by the minute, he drove from the hospital to his home with the cassette player blasting the best of Johannes Sebastian Bach.