Trophy 19

Mason House had been constructed by a wealthy cattle baron, taken with a young Mexican wife. Despite being well north of the border, it was to all appearances a traditional hacienda of Old Mexico: from its patio to its arches, the towering trees and potted plants, the iron benches painted white and the trails of gravel.

Over the decades, the town it had been set up a respectable distance away from had grown to incorporate it. At first, with its iron gates and vast lawn, Mason House had maintained a respectable grandeur. Its neighborhood and the surrounding neighborhood had been almost entirely white, middle-class, and the worst offenses the hacienda saw were neighborhood kids throwing trash over the gates on a dare.

Then, decades of what might be deemed reverse gentrification. Minorities moving in, crime growing steadily, whites moving to the suburbs to avoid victimization—in many cases, repeated victimization. Mason House had been a long-time holdout, but eventually the descendants of that romantic cattle baron had sold cheap to a consortium owned by the Scagliones.

There were few takers, even for such a nice property, when it was in the middle of the ghetto. Some overseas buyers had been tricked into purchasing houses for rent, sight unseen, but by the time Mason House gave in, the scam had run its course. Now it was principally a number on a ledger, used by the Scagliones for tax tricks and investment fraud.

As a residence, it was one of many the Haitians abused. They’d already burned through—in some cases literally—seventy single-family homes, turning the district into a mirror image of wartime Britain. Mason House had been made something of a headquarters. Big enough to accommodate the entire gang, their hanger-ons, and the rabble that worshiped them in the same way a beaten dog will if it doesn’t have the spine to bite.

The influx of cash from the Beluccis’ ransom had led to the wildest party Mason House had yet seen. The Haitians had purchased meat from a butcher store—a rare delicacy, when stray dogs and cats were cheaper than even the fastest fast food—and were cooking it on a bed of hot coal. A dozen huge boomboxes formed a makeshift stereo system. Not all of them were paying the same song, and those that were played it out of sync, but with the amount of weed in the air, few could tell.

One of the smarter specimens had bought a smoke machine to excuse the omnipresent smoke from cigarettes, joints, bongs, even hookahs. It made the grounds look like a Hammer movie graveyard, with manmade fog shifting relentlessly around everyone’s ankles. But there were no headstones to rear atmospherically up. Only the bodies of the passed out, the dead, and the copulating.

The party had raged for so long, into the early hours of the morning, that many had hit their limit. Others, still wired by speed or cocaine, took advantage of freshly bought spray paint to apply new graffiti to the artifacts of the old owner. They already had faded graffiti on them, hadn’t been washed in years, so all the new spray paint accomplished was to add more chaos to the already incomprehensible. Like a shattered mirror being broken into smaller shards.

This had occurred to a few of them, through their drugged stupor, and they took up spray-painting the grounds, neon colors knifing through the mist. Almost forming a pattern, except that in many cases the paint ran over the copulating or unconscious, and their moving bodies turned the haphazard pattern into a living, injured thing.

Some, awoken by being painted, got up and wandered about dazedly. In the moon-struck dark, with the bass pounding its heartbeat into the air itself and everything else, they seemed like golems pulled from the earth. It didn’t help that spilled drinks and spilled piss had turned most of the barren ground to mud. At least some was smeared on the clothes and skin of everyone in attendance.

Four-thirty AM. Frank thought he’d timed his approach right. Not late enough for the fallen to rouse from their slumber, but not so early that he had to deal with anyone whose nerves were going full blast. He dressed casually, in a summer suit, but with some flash. A lavender scarf, sunglasses with star-shaped frames, sneakers that were endorsed by an NBA star. Making himself look like a rich guy slumming it.

Unbelievably, he wasn’t the only white guy there. He counted at least a dozen passed out or milling around, all of them affecting the same nonchalant look as him. Only it wasn’t a pose for them. He could see it on their faces. This was their idea of a good time. There were even some women, almost as white as the cocaine on their nostrils.

It shouldn’t surprise him. What loyalty did these people have to their city, their country, their people? It was all either a playground or a hunting ground. The Haitians might be boiling the entire city like a frog in a pot, but they offered easy pussy, cheap weed, even some profit if you needed scab labor.

Before Frank’s eyes, one of the whites almost literally stumbled over a fallen black girl. She was ghetto chic: jean shorts as tiny as a thong, a bra under a T-shirt with so many holes scissored into it that it looked like Swiss cheese. The white guy got one look at her and her closed eyes and he was kneeling over her, fumbling with his belt. He didn’t even check for a pulse before he got started.

Frank walked right up to him. The man kept working open his trousers, but looked up at Frank. “Hey, bro, I saw her first.”

Frank put his knee into the man’s face. He went down in a half-second. And if he stirred, the mist that covered him didn’t show it.

“Thanks for that. These parties can get rill out of hand.”

Frank turned. His eyes widened. He almost whistled. Of the female party-goers, some were pretty, some were the ‘fat bitches’ that seemed so popular with Africans—but this was a rarity. She was gorgeous and dressed to accentuate it to a razor-sharp point, rather than clutter her beauty with trashy jewelry and clothes. Her voluptuous, chocolate breasts were only covered by a few strings of beads, leaving her belly and hips and ass exposed, except for a vee of more beads that ostensibly hid her crotch.

She came to Frank through the mist like it was the smoke from her own private fire, every step slithering, undulating, her mocha hips swaying, pure sex from her tangled golden hair to her sleepy, smoldering eyes and the moist, half-parted lips that flashed him a hint of teeth that must be able to cut like scalpels.

“The parties or the people?”

She twisted her head about, tossing hair that’d been dyed the color of a Fort Knox gold bar. “You tell me. You is the people, ain’t cha?”

She spoke in a breathless, throaty voice: a little ghetto, a little class, shifting from one to the other to make it impossible to pin her down. Her appearance was all sex, but the way she carried herself was purely regal. Like she had the soul of a Roman empress in the body of a Playboy pin-up.

“If you say so.”

“I says so. And if you don’t want to hear it from my lips, I can say it with something else.” She cupped her firm, brown breasts in her hands and teasingly thrust them out through the beads. “You came here for a good time, yes? I’m a rill good time.”

Without waiting for an answer, she thrust herself into him, kissing him wetly, rubbing her body to his to press him backwards, as if she were trying to get his back to the wall. Frank set his heels in the ground to stop being moved, but now her fingers were flying over the buttons of his shirt.

“You white boys wear too many clothes! Don’t let us girls see nun a the goods. But you’ve got a lot to show off, don’t you?”

Frank reached under her thighs to pick her up and grind her crotch against his muscular physique. She all but crooned, feeling what a statue she had wrapped herself around—her legs went around his waist and squeezed playfully.

“Yeah. Plenty to show off. But not a lot of people I want to show it to. Just you.”

She grinned, flashing that surgeon smile through her plump lips. “If you want some privacy, boy, we can go inside. There are plenty of rooms. You promise you won’t take no advantage of me, if I’m all alone with you?”

“Let’s just say I’ll let you take advantage of me… and not complain too much about it.”

“Lawdy, who needs romance when you gotta big dick?” She wiggled out of his grip and grabbed his wrist with both her hands, pulling him along the lawn. Closer to the house, the ground squished under his shoes.

Frank was glad he wasn’t a sneakerhead; he’d never forgive himself for what he was putting these things through.

In truth, Frank wouldn’t have minded laying her in front of all and sundry. The first trick of the Marine Corps was to sleep wherever you could. The second was to make a good fuck out of any fuck you could get.

But he sensed he was being played, that the fix was in, and thought he’d be in a better position to strike if he went along with the mouse trap just enough to get a whiff of cheese.