We’ll Take Care of That
Ginna Jackson was walking home from the corner store. The time was nine thirty AM. She had gone to pick up milk which she forgot to pick up the night before. Her two daughters were waiting anxiously for their cereal. The block was mostly dead, which made this her favorite time of the day. All the hooting and hollering had stopped, because all the noise makers were passed out, mostly.
From across the street came a man passing Ginna, he pulled up his zipper and have her a big grin. Ginna was a young mother, twenty-three with two kids, but had a figure that still turned heads. Never the right heads, always the head’s of some two bit punks that thought they were Fifty-Cent. Last week at the store, one of them smiled at her with a silver tooth (most likely couldn’t afford gold, but wanted the look anyway), and said how’d you like ta get sum gangsta nuts? This was usually the caliber of men she encountered in her neighborhood, or hood rather.
Ginna rolled her eyes as she walked by and went inside, where her babies sat at the table with bowls of cereal but no milk. Their little faces lit up like Christmas. Shanise was three and Rosa was six. They all lived with Ginna’s mother, poor as shit, but the only family on the block not on any public assistance. There were plenty of families in the area not on assistance, but Ginna happen to be the only one on hers. She worked two jobs; a part time c.n.a. and receptionist at the local planned parent hood. She wasn’t sure which job she hated more. Probably the receptionist job, because she had to deal with all the people in her hood she did not care for. People she tried to stay away from. Ginna never felt like big things were in her future, but she finished high school. Finishing school was more than a lot of other people did.
She poured the milk into babies bowls and they chomped down those lucky charms like a school of fish at feeding time. Their faces were wide with smiles, even while they were chewing. With neither of their fathers in their life, Ginna felt she was doing a great job with them. Rosa could read well and Shanise was learning her alphabet and speaking in whole sentences. They were good-natured and not bratty like her friends kids.
Ginna Jackson looked up at her mother, “Momma I got to go. I can’t be late. You know how they be acting up if I’m late. I’ll be back at around six.” She kissed her babies good buy and headed out the door to for the bus stop.
As she walked out Dean Simmons from across the street yelled at her, “Yo, bitch when you gonna come over here. I’ll make a spot for you any time!”
A chill went up Ginna’s spine. It did every time one of them from across the street said anything to her. But she didn’t even give him so much as a glance, flinch, or eye roll. Simply tried to pretend that he didn’t exist. That is what everyone on the block did, tried to pretend that Dean Simmons and his friends didn’t exist. And soon, they wouldn’t.
Dean scratched his nuts with his hand inside his pants while pulling a drag on his cigarette. He smoked newports, a luxury others didn’t enjoy at ten dollars a pack. He looked up and down the block, still hung over like he was every morning. He sat on the stoop for ten of fifteen minutes until his cigarette was finished. Next he went inside and grabbed a forty ounce out of the fridge. It was never too early to get his drink on. The living room was filled with about five men sleeping where ever they landed. Guns laid on the table and the floor, weed and booze spread over the table as well. Dean hated when they fell asleep with their guns out, loaded. Perfect targets, he thought. Even though there was always at least one person awake in the house. The look out. Dean was just starting his shift, he tugged at the pistol tucked at his back making sure it was secure.
He went upstairs to do a room check. The house had four rooms in the upstairs, once they connected the duplex. He opened each room to take a look in. There were two or three beds in each room, young women were passed out in them. Except for Tina, who lay half awake with tears in her eyes. She just took care of their early morning customer.
Back outside on the stoop, nothing was happening. The day time was always slow. Dean sat quietly for three hours, drinking and smoking, before a man came strolling along. He was fairly new, only came two times before. Never in the morning. He got a reference from a regular, said they were cousins. No strangers were allowed at this brothel, the risk was too high. Although everyone knew exactly what they were, but never would say so due to fear, only referred costumers who were checked out could come inside.
“You remember the rules. Don’t fucking talk to no body when you walk through the house, don’t look at anything, don’t touch nothing. You go where I put you, you do your thing, an’ you leave quietly.” Dean didn’t bother adding a, you understand? He knew he was clear. The man looked jittery, probably a base head.
Dean led him through the house, watching him closely. At the steps he searched him for a wire or any surveillance. He never searched them outside because that would be a big sign to the law; illegal activity inside. And if he had a wire, he would never make it out alive. No devices found, so he got to come upstairs. Dean opened the first door, took the mans money, then kicked one the girls to wake up.
The girl flinched and made a squeak as she came out of her drug induced slumber. The other girls woke up, but just opened their eyes and shut them again. They didn’t want to be awake to watch. Dean pointed the girl as to say, that’s your girl, then he walked down stairs.
Six thirty, Ginna was just strolling down the street, coming home from work. She looked across the street to catch some kind of commotion. At night things always livened up. More and more men poured into, The House, as the neighborhood called it. Not all costumers, or rapist rather, but many were gangsters. They occupied that house like a strong hold. Ginna suspected they kept drug money as well as girls there. Both were things that needed to be well hidden. They accomplished this by brute force and fear. Ginna had watched enough to know there were around ten men in that house “working” every night. They sent the message regularly that they were not be to crossed. It looked like that message was being sent again.
Dean was harassing another passer-byer. A man this time. “Hey. Hey. George. Why you walk by lookin’ at me like dat? I know you fuck hoes. I seen you at the club getting your shit sucked in bathroom.”
George, who lived down the street a ways, replied loudly. “Cause those girls ain’t no fuckin’ hookers you got in there! They’re prisoners and everyone fuckin’ knows it! I pay for sex, but I ain’t no fuckin’ rape-o. Some one will stand up to you. You gonna get yours.”
Ginna stopped cold in her tracks when she heard George respond. She never liked him a whole lot, but she whole-heartedly wished he hadn’t have said that. She winced as she watched.
Dean did not even bother responding to his flagrant defiance. He simply pulled out his silenced pistol and put three bullets in his chest. Immediately three other men on the porch got up to retrieve the body. Dean and the men quickly grabbed Georges body and dragged it away to the garage.
Ginna double timed it inside. This was exactly why no one would ever speak up or testify against any of them. They killed so quickly and so thoughtlessly, no one would be surprised if they killed several people to keep them from talking. The reality was now, that everyone on the block that was not a criminal, was just too damned poor to move anywhere else. They were also prisoners of their own neighborhood.
Two hours later Ginna had put the girls to bed. She sat out on the porch with her mother while they both smoked cigarettes. Across the street, three men including Dean, sat on their porch drinking beers and talking shit. Just seeing them made Ginna sick to her stomach. She tried her best to ignore them, but how did someone ignore a presence like that. Ginna’s mother knitted as they talked about her day and how work was. Ginna loved to gossip. It was her only pass-time, besides taking care of her babies. The night was lit up well with the moon and the stars surprisingly for the inner city. She and her mother were the only ones outside besides the thugs across the street. She didn’t come out often, no one did, everyone was too scared. Stay inside and don’t make waves was the way to survive.
Out of the blue a man came walking down the street. He was almost in front of the house before Ginna noticed him. A white man at that. Ginna wrote him off as a “costumer” for across the street. But he didn’t cross the street. He had a shaved head and wore a long black dress coat. It was a tad chilly, but not quite cold enough for a dress coat. She was really shocked, when he stopped in front of their steps. Standing in front of her, the man was a brute. He had to be at least 6’5”.
The man had a overly calm look on his face. Like he was in another world. Ginna was suddenly very afraid. “Hello,” the man said in a even and serene voice. Surprisingly soft for such a big man.
She looked at him queerly and said “Hello?”
“You ladies enjoying this brisk night air?”
Ginna was beyond confused. This strange man comes out of nowhere, into a neighborhood that is known for chasing white people, who aren’t buying drugs or pussy, out in a hurry, and strikes up chit-chat? What the hell was going on? Please lord, don’t let him be one of them crazies. Or a crack head, dear god, I put up with enough. What is this man doin’ in front of me? “Yeeaa. We are,” Ginna spoke slowly, uneasy. “I’m sorry, can I he-” Ginna was interrupted by Rosa banging on the screen door behind her. That child never stayed asleep. She always woke up and wanted to come down stairs. Ginna wished it wouldn’t have been now. Rosa came outside before Ginna could tell her to get back to bed.
“Hi. Who are you?” Rosa was surprisingly outgoing. Children were usually good judges of character, and Rosa did not seem scared of this man. Although his appearance was anything but warm and fuzzy.
The man smiled wide, but somehow it seemed empty. Not that it was insincere, more that there was really no happiness in the man. “I don’t have a name. But you can think of me as a friend.”
“Okay, what do you want? Why are you talking-” Ginna was cut off again, this time by the man holding his finger to his lips, making a shhh sound. “Who are you,” she asked in a quieter tone.
Rosa spoke up before he could answer, “are you one of the bad men from across the street.” She put on a sad face. Even a child knew, from the way her mother reacted to them.
“No. You don’t like those men do you?” The man put his hands in his coat pocket, he seemed to almost relax a little. Rosa shook her head no. “Well, you don’t have to worry any more. Me and my friends are going to take care of them.” He smiled another dull empty smile. He stood straighter, widening his shoulders causing his coat to draw back just a little. Ginna caught the gleam of a large rifle hanging from his shoulder, under his coat.
“Are you a cop?”
“No, miss. Look, you have about two minutes to go inside and get to a safe place okay. Preferably upstairs.”
Ginna didn’t like the sound of that, but at the same time she did not feel like he was threatening her. She did not ask anymore questions. She helped her mother up to her feet and picked up Rosa, who waved to the man over Ginna’s shoulder, and went inside and up the stairs. All four of them sat in the children’s room together.
The mysterious man turned around and started walking across the street. Ginna watched out the window upstairs, she made the girls sit on the bed at the other side of the room. He strolled slow but confident still with his hands in his pockets. He never slowed or stopped.
Before he was half way across the street, Dean and his associates were up off the porch threatening him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You in the wrong place whitey.” There was no response. “You got a problem. You lookin’ for trouble?” Dean raised his gun and the three others followed. Before the white man reached the side walk, Dean and his friends dropped to the ground like rag dolls. Each one jerked at the head, like it was almost torn off. Courtesy of a sniper down the block, which didn’t make so much as a whisper.
The man in the black coat pulled the pins out of two grenades and chucked them through the windows. Throwing his coat back, he shouldered a large black fully automatic SCAR-L rifle. A few thugs busted out the front door in response to the grenades, but the mystery man opened fire and mowed them down like grass as they stepped out.
The grenades went off with a boom that was deafening. Ginny never knew the damned things were so loud. The windows burst outward, the whole house trembled, the vibration could be felt across the street. Car alarms went off from the shock, there was screaming and yelling. Some from the men who were blown up, and some from the neighborhood that was scared half to death. Ginna watched intently out the window.
The mystery man let his rifle swing back underneath his coat and pulled out two pistols as he entered the house. Two other men dressed in black that Ginna could not see had already busted in the back entrance, and killed both, those that tried to escape out the back and the ones that hadn’t quite died. The scene was brutal. Five men in bloody scattered pieces all over the house. The house itself was blazing in fire now, they did not have much time.
The mystery men let the other two upstairs. They busted in each room, putting a bullet in every man they found. The girls were screaming and crying, huddled up in the corners. Some however were far too drugged up to leave their beds, no matter how scared they were. The mystery man that lead the attack lead all the girls that could walk outside to the front. A black Acura had pulled up out front and met him with black robes. The girls didn’t have much on, but raggedy shorts and tank tops. The other two men carried the ones that could walk. Once all of them were outside, they gave the women robes to wear, bottled water, a bag of cereal bars. This was really just a courtesy, none of which were major necessities. The ambulances and police would be forced to come to the scene. Before anyone, including the girls they just freed, could ask them any questions; they drove off in the Acura. Leaving behind them the house in flames and close to twenty dead men.
It was only moments after they left, that the street was filled with sirens. Police, ambulances, T.V. Reporters that would never normally come to that neighborhood for a story. The girls who came out of the house were too relieved to even care what had just happened. The bottom line was, they were free.
Ginna thought back, that black car had been parked down the street since that morning. But she could not recall ever seeing who parked it. She certainly never saw the man that had talked to her. She was certain she would never again. It all happened too fast. Never would she have believed, if someone told her that all the scumbags terrorizing the neighborhood would be wiped out inside five minutes, not in a million years. She didn’t think the police could have done it better. That is, the police would never be authorized to blow people up with grenades, so there was an advantage. But just like that, her neighborhood would be changed forever. And the honest to god’s truth was, she didn’t feel a feather’s weight of sadness or angst over all those deaths. She was actually happy, as if she had been saved right along with those poor girls.
Later a news report would feature a local man’s retelling of the events.
“They was just like the real live Boondock Saints, man. They lit them niggas up! You seen that movie? The one where the Irish dudes go around killin’ the mobsta’s. And they all like, bang bang, pow, boom! It was JUST like that. That shit was gansta!”
