Black Power Book Excerpt

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featured in The Darker Mask  edited by Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers

Ten years after the murder of Sage Steele’s mother, somebody was slaying the whores of Sector 7, and the twenty-year-old was determined to find the killer. Her heart bled for the Onyx City hookers, and if nobody was going to protect them from the horrors of the city, then it was her duty to be the avenging angel of Algren Avenue.

Reading about the murders in the Onyx Observer, whose ace crime reporters detailed the poisoned mind of the hooker killer the press had dubbed “the Valentine Killer,” because of the large hearts he carved into each victim’s cleavage, made Sage disgusted. Never forgetting where she came from, she reasoned, “No matter what, those women are my sisters. We share the same tainted blood. I’m going to find this bastard.”

Sage hadn’t decided if she would kill him or merely turn the murdering perv into the ineffectual police force, but she figured she could stomp across that bridge when she got to it.

Cruising down Algren Avenue in a custom designed little black Corvette coup Dr. Sax had built for her last year (”You can’t be a superhero with a tough ride,” he’d said, unveiling the noir car), Sage was dressed in pink vinyl boots with a stiletto heel and matching maxi-length raincoat. Her oval eyes had lush lashes and her lids were smudged with a golden shadow. There was evidence of an old scar near her left eye. Underneath the shiny coat, she styled a skintight black and red leather jumpsuit, and an arsenal of weapons.   

Sage wore a stylish natural Afro that would have made Angela Davis proud. Flashing a bit of luscious brown flesh, there was a beautiful multicolored butterfly tattooed on Sage’s left breast in memory of her dead mother Papillion. Surprised to see an open parking space, Sage pulled-up directly in front of the Terminal Bar.

“Got that Zo, got that Zo,” chatted a teenaged drug cowboy hustling whoever slinked down the streets. Carrying a giant boombox blasting the latest ghetto superstar rapper, the husky boy wore sagging jeans and a t-shirt that read ZO WORLD ORDER.

Apparently, the boy had thought Sage might be interested in his poison. “I got that Zo, pretty lady.”

“You have the wrong one, kid,” Sage replied. “If I were you, I’d find a sandbox to play in before I forgot that you’re a minor.”

Terminal Bar was a few blocks away from her former home, the Bristol Hotel. Many a night, young Sage had pulled her drunken mother from the tattered leatherette booths in the back of the dump. Certainly, that was years before the new owners had transformed the once upon a time dive bar into the premier music venue. Many affluent Onyx City kids from other sectors were often inside the spot, slumming and digging the underground sounds while searching for their own thrills.

Stepping from her car, Sage slammed the door as the Zo dealing boy sneered at her and threw a Coke bottle. The glass shattered against the splintered front of the club.

“Fuck you bitch, you ain’t goin’ to do shit,” yelled the dealer, who was sixteen going on dead. Putting his oversized radio down, he reached behind his back and pulled out a platinum-plated nine-millimeter.

“Don’t forget,” swaggered towards her, waving the piece in her pretty face. “This turf belongs to Kidd Babylon, we just allow you freaks to borrow it. You don’t want to get on his bad side.”

Kidd Babylon (aka Desmond Headley) was a Bob Marley looking yardie straight from the rude bwoy dirt streets of Kingston in ‘78. With long locks and a lanky body, he was a motherless child who had moved to Onyx City with his car mechanic father and a box full of Motown records that had once belonged to his mama. From the time he was a boy, “Love Child” was his favorite song.

Smart, but mischievous, the thick accented boy soon fell in with a group of aerosol artists who viewed themselves as urban outlaws, graffiti spraying their multicolored tags throughout the urban jungle of Sector 7. Naming his serial bombing crew after a shoot’ em-up cowboy flick he had seen when he was still a Trench Town boy, Kidd Babylon convinced the crew to call themselves the Wild Bunch.

As a sign of their loyalty, each gang member tattooed the word “wild” above the knuckles of their right hand. In a matter of months, everyone in Onyx City knew the name Kidd Babylon and the Wild Bunch posse. Yet, art crimes didn’t generate the same kind of buzz or Benjamin’s as dealing Zo or pimping whores.

In his early days as the main Zo supplier in the hood, the blunt smoking blood shot eyed Kidd Babylon quietly crept through the broken streets of Sector 7 at various hours, making sure his money and honey flowed steadily. “Trust no one except eye & I,” he mumbled, swaggering through the hood like a knight in his flashy clothes and ruby-hued pinkie ring. Usually clad in superfly suits and black Pro-Ked sneakers. Babylon’s channeled seventies style as if he was the Mack.

Sage looked at the kid, and spit on the ground. “Didn’t your mother teach you about waving dangerous things in stranger’s faces,” she muttered, leaning in close.

“Bitch, you can play pussy if you want to, but keep it up and you gonna get fucked.”

“Wrong answer,” Sage said, head butting the teenager with the force of a black tornado. Throwing him off balance, the boy teetered like a rusty fence and dropped the piece. Club patrons scattered like roaches as a nameless bullet dislodged from the gun.

Swooping down a beautiful bird, Sage kicked the gun into the gutter, bringing her foot around in a swift motion that connected with the boys jaw.

“Bitch!” he screamed, spitting blood and teeth onto the ground. “You dead.” Reaching down to his thick sweat socks, the boy exposed a black switchblade. Before he had a chance to grab the knife, Sage chopped him on the back of the neck with a thunderous blow. Throwing back his head, electric circuits of pain shot down his vertebrae.

Seconds later, Sage planted her right foot into the sensitive softness of his scrotum. Walking over to the gutter, Sage picked-up the platinum pistol as the punk ass dealer laid on the ground and groaned. Strutting over to the boy, she held the gun to his temple with her right hand, while digging out his Zo stash with her left.

In a flick of the wrist, she tossed the stuffed baggie, which held about two hundred hits of Zo, in the sewer grate a few feet away. This had been tenth Zo dealer she had jacked in the last few weeks; word was bound to get to Kidd Babylon soon that some chick was messing with his drug business. “The only things getting zooted tonight will be the alligators living in the sewer,” Sage blurted.

“You’re going to pay,” the dealer managed to moan.

Sage smiled and snapped the gun’s safety off. Pressing the nine against the boy’s bleeding forehead, she screamed, “BANG!” Certainly, she had heard stories of scared men simultaneously shitting and pissing on themselves, but that night was the first time she had seen it for herself.

Standing-up, Sage tucked his gun inside one of the deep pockets of her vinyl coat. Grabbing the dealer tightly by the shirt collar, Sage told him the same thing she had told the other nine dealers. “You make sure you tell Kidd Babylon that you got took by Sage Steele.”

copyright © 2008, All Rights Reserved

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