Issue #11 (Sep 2023) Written by Jake Hawkins Featuring:
Black Panther
SOUTHSIDE BROOKLYN 1:34 AM
A rusted off-beat brown colored caravan pulled to a creaking stop in the dimly lit alleyway. Blu led a group of men in Gortex bubble jackets that matched their Timberland boots out of the vehicle.
Blu gave the driver a subtle but firm nod of the head as the diamonds in his Cartier-framed glasses glinted under one of the alley street lights. He had a vintage Al-Wassam leather jacket around him to protect himself from the October New York weather, complete with fur trim around the hood. He dropped half a stack of cash in the driver’s hand as he reached into the window to dap him up, considering it an insurance policy that he wouldn’t split on them if the job went sideways.
The van pulled out of the alley and back onto the mostly empty streets of Brooklyn. Blu watched the driver disappear before heading in the opposite direction down towards a lone steel door on the side of one of the buildings. He glanced behind him at the crew he’d brought alongside him for a brief moment, looking each of them in the eyes to be sure there was not an ounce of fear to be found. There would be no room for it, not with the task they’d been assigned to tonight. Blu pounded on the door, three solid knocks with his fist before the viewing plate slid open.
A pair of coal-black beady eyes stared back at them all, glaring with the intent to show menace. “*&^% do y’all want?” A voice belonging to the pair of eyes grunted from behind the door.
Blu wasn’t the least bit pressed by the bouncer’s aggressiveness as he responded. “We here to see Jazz. Don’t bother giving me no bullshit either. We got an appointment.” Blu stared back behind his Cartier buffs, not pressed or thrown off his usual smooth game in the slightest. The bouncer sized them all up for a tense moment before slamming the plate shut again.
Blu rocked back and forth on his heels in the alley as he waited for the sound of the metal bar that locked the heavy door being slid out of position. The door swung open, and the bouncer stepped aside, allowing Blu and his men to enter what looked to be a rather dusty apartment complex. The bouncer jerked his head to the right and gave Blu the instructions he gave to every visitor to the building. “Elevator down the hall. Keep it moving.”
The crew lumbered down the hall towards the freight elevator at the end. Blu took notice of his surroundings as he reached the lift, noticing the expensive security cameras in nearly every corner he counted so far. He led his crew onto the lift and slammed the gates shut behind them. The bouncer stared them down from his post as the elevator rose out of sight.
They stepped out on the eighth floor and directly into an elegant penthouse apartment that didn’t match the building it was housed in at all. The condo had been converted into an underground casino with craps tables and blackjack dealers spread out across the main foyer and living area. The Bouncer working the elevator pulled open the doors and watched each of them step out. Blu didn’t mind the skeptical look he saw the second bouncer cast in his direction. He kept his focus on looking for the man they were here to see, managing to spot him at one of the poker tables near the balcony, just beneath the moonroof.
Jaz, the number two under one of Brooklyn’s biggest drug traffickers, was far too focused on the peach of a hand he had to notice Blu’s arrival. The former Jets linebacker who played with Curtis Martin himself, however, had an eagle eye on the room as if he was scanning an opposing team’s offensive formation. He leaned towards his boss’s shoulder and whispered a few words that were impossible to hear for anyone else over Nas King Disease 3 album that was playing on the condo’s state-of-the-art surround sound system.
Jaz flashed an annoyed grimace, one that Blu took careful note of as he watched the end of the game play out. Once the hand wrapped up, Jaz rose from the table and motioned for Blu to follow him and his guards. Blu turned around and gave a nod of assurance to his own crew, letting them know with just this motion that he would be fine alone for now. He crossed through the crowded room, past a particularly hot craps table where a couple of near arguments breaking out were trying to be stifled by security.
Blu stepped through the kitchen, where a handful of people were waiting for the bartender to finish mixing their drinks, and down the hall towards a private lounge. He rounded the corner, where Jaz’s personal bodyguard blocked his path. The ex-all-pro roughly shook Blu down for any weapons he could possibly have. Finally feeling comfortable that his search was sufficient, he stepped aside and allowed Blu to enter the lounge. Blu puffed his chest just a tad more than usual as he gave the guard a sideways glare and walked into the lounge.
“Blu, man I ain’t think you was finna show up to keep it real with you son.” Jaz admitted as a waiter brought him over a tall glass of Blue Moon.
“Shit you should know me better than that by now, my baby.” The Detroiter advised him as he took a seat in one of the wide-backed purple suede lounge seats. He waved off the waitress coming to ask him for a drink. Jaz smirked, amused that Blu was turning down a chance to have a drink with him. He sipped his own beer before moving the conversation along.
“Yeah you got a reputation for being punctual, I ain’t gonna cap about that. Shit that’s what got you in that chair right now.” Jaz shook his head as he contemplated his following words. “But I invited you here out of respect. Because I cannot do what you’ve asked of me.”
Blu tried to hide his disappointment but failed to do so. He leaned forward in the chair, his elbows on his knees as he took a long look at Jaz. “C’mon dawg. Me and you then did more than enough business for you to know I’m solid.”
Jaz took another long sip of his beer. “Yeah, you’re solid Blu. You’re solid when you’re working with me. But don’t think I don’t know about some of the shit you be pulling all across town. Jada’s about to make sure you can’t step in Yonkers.”
Blu leaned back again and folded his arms, dismissive of the claims that Jaz was listing to him. “Look man I can be a bigger asset if you talk to Mariah-”
“Be for real Blu!” Jaz cut across him, the beer starting to amplify his annoyance. “Mariah can’t have no fucking wildcards in her operation.”
# # # # # # # # # #
In the clouds high above the city, sitting atop his skybike was the Black Panther. The entire conversation between Jaz and Blu was being played inside of his own cowl. The monitor sitting in the middle of his bike handlebars showed the location of the microphone that was broadcasting the information he needed directly to him. He stood up on his bike, looking down at the city through the clouds.
It’s taken me a month to get this close to one of her lieutenants. A month of careful planning, and canvassing every street from Brooklyn to Harlem in order to catch this man when he would be most vulnerable.
T’Challa, the crown king of the nation of Wakanda, removed his helmet for a moment as he continued to listen to the conversation below, now via the speakers in his bike.
“Let me go on this run down to Philly for you, show I can be a system player man.” Blu pleaded his case, much to the amusement of Jaz or so it seemed to T’Challa.
“Look I got some work I need grabbed from uptown. Brought back this way discreetly. A lot of shit been going left lately so you make sure this goes smoothly, I’ll seriously consider your request.”
T’Challa placed his helmet back on. He had heard enough, and there were answers he still needed that he would only obtain one way at this point. He sat back on the bike and revved the throttle. The Skybike went streaking through the clouds, breaking through them like a black bolt of lightning.
# # # # # # # # # #
Inside the penthouse lounge, Jaz’s girlfriend started rolling a stogie, watching Jaz and Blu finalize the details of their arrangement. Once she made sure the wrap was closed tightly, the seal line razor straight from top to bottom, she passed it to Jaz over his shoulder.
“Appreciate it.” Jaz whispered to her as she went back to the table behind them to stuff another cigar wrap. Jaz turned his immediate focus back to Blu. He dug into his coat pocket for a lighter, fishing for one briefly before coming up with what he was searching for.
“When do I get the time and place?” Blu wondered.
Jaz puffed a cloud of smoke into the air and lazily answered his query. “Soon as we finish putting a bow on shit with my people that way. You know the drill. Keep your phone on and be ready to move.” Jaz passed him the blunt, which Blu took as another sign they would continue to do business on hopefully solid footing.
Just as Blu placed it to his lips, glass shattered, and screams cut over the music. Jaz instinctively pulled his piece from his waistband. He shoots a glare in Blu’s direction, but Blu has also drawn a pistol he managed to sneak in with his attention toward the apparent chaos in the main room. Jaz stomped past Blu until he was cut off by his bodyguard placing a hand on his chest. The guard and a few others in the room under Jaz's employ rushed out of the lounge.
# # # # # # # # # #
Black Panther stepped off his skybike and scanned the room for his target. He had recalibrated the Kimoyo systems facial recognition system just that morning and put it to use here. Security rushed in from downstairs and the lounge area, cordoning off most of the main room as they surrounded the intruder. T’Challa was disinterested in the lot of them, even as they all trained their pistols in his direction. He clicked his teeth once he was done looking over the startled and frightened faces trying to hit the only exit out of the condo and didn’t find the man he was here for.
He took a step forward, vibranium-soled boots somehow not making a sound on the shattered glass under his feet. The act was enough to cause a guard to shoot, but T’Challa stepped back, anticipating the act. The stray bullet caught one of the men across from him in the collarbone.
T’Challa knew it was shattered from the impact as the guard dropped. He tossed an energy dagger in the direction of the shooter instinctively. The blade caught the guard in the shoulder, knocking him flat on his back.
I wanted to do this without bloodshed. That’s the only reason I spared the trigger-happy imbecile. These men aren’t trained, merely local hands for hire or I’m assuming men who have been foot soldiers for Jaz for quite some time. Either way, while I may not want anyone to lose their life here tonight…
T’Challa eyes narrowed underneath his helmet as Jaz’s head of security pulled a shotgun from inside one of the kitchen cabinets and pushed through the crowd toward him.
I will beat any man who stands in my way senseless.
Once the guard broke through the crowd, T’Challa didn’t give him the chance to aim the weapon. Closing the space between them in a step he snatched the barrel of the shotgun and smashed a straight right fist into his nose. The blow sent him stumbling backwards into one of the blackjack stands which was no doubt the only reason the man was still on his feet.
T’Challa however, had decided to show all gathered that he very much meant business. He walloped the guard across the face with the butt of the shotgun, sending teeth flying as the guard fell face-first to the floor. The Black Panther whipped around, eyeing the rest of the guards nervously aiming shaky-handed weapons at him.
Another guard however felt brave enough to go next in the escalating fray and attempted to tackle the panther from behind. T’Challa used the guard’s momentum to hip-toss him over the kitchen island, sending him crashing into the dishwasher. Realizing they may be far too overmatched, the remaining men working security unload their weapons at the Black Panther, much to his annoyance. He stalked back towards the men firing their weapons without regard at, the kinetic energy from the harmless impact being absorbed by his suit. T’Challa’s mounting worries at how the situation was playing out weren’t for himself however, but the people either scrambling for cover or to escape the condo.
This has escalated far enough, the drawbacks of my necessary approach. They’ll try to slip Jaz out in the chaos, that is, if he doesn’t give in to the itch to get involved himself. I’m not solely relying on the latter, but it wouldn’t hurt for the roll of the dice to go in my direction. It would certainly help wrap this up quicker.
T’Challa discharged the kinetic energy with a clap of his hands. It sent a controlled shockwave that smacked across the troop of shooters and rag-dolled them around the apartment. He snapped his attention behind him once more as Jaz and Blu came out from the back room. Blu stared at the mask of the Panther as his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach. This was his second run-in within the last two weeks with the cloaked assailant who was ripping through every security measure Jaz had in place.
How did he find this place? Was he after him? Or Jaz? Blu had far too many questions running through his head as money slipped through his fingers in front of him. He bolted for the exit, leaping across craps tables in an effort to scramble out of the apartment and the building after that. He jumped off one of the tables and couldn’t have been more than fifteen steps from the crowd trying to push their way out of the apartment and away from the violence. Before he could begin shoving people out of his path to freedom, he was tackled to the floor and slammed facefirst into the carpet by the Panther.
“I don’t think you’ll be leaving here unless its in cuffs.” T’Challa taunted Blu before restraining him with a pair he had himself. The sound of another gun cocking caused him to look up into the face of the shotgun now being wielded by his true prey, Jaz.
“So you led this bullshit to my doorstep, Blu? Gimme a reason I shouldn’t blow both your heads off?” Jaz meant every bit of his threat, which made T’Challa respond in kind. He quickly pulled his back-up vibranium pistol from the holster on his ankle and kneecapped Jaz with two quick shots.
Jaz fell face first as well as he howled in pain, shocked that his assailant had gone to such cruel lengths to subdue him. T’Challa stood up, removing his knee from Blu’s back, and walked over until he was now standing before Jaz. “Do not worry, vibranium bullets leave cleaner wounds, you will walk again.” T’Challa assured the writhing Jaz before snatching him up by the back of his shirt. His girlfriend rushed out from behind the couch she was hiding behind with a busted Hennessy bottle.
“Get the fuck off him!” She rushed towards the Panther with bravery she had no business having now of all times. T’Challa smacked the bottle from her hand with relative ease, never releasing his grip on Jaz.
“Get lost.” T’Challa’s firm instruction caused the woman to slowly back away from him, terrified by the masked man who had left over a dozen bodies lying in his wake. T’Challa dragged Jaz across the living room and boarded his bike once more. He steered the skybike right back out of the opening created by himself with Jaz hanging in his grip.
Just a few minutes later T’Challa tossed Jaz across a rooftop as he landed the bike. Jaz tried to crawl away from T’Challa as he stepped off the skybike with his cloak wrapped around him. Desperate to create as much space between himself and the man who had assaulted his entire chain of staff, weighed his options for some means of escape.
T’Challa walked across the rooftop towards the demoralized and hobbled Jaz, ready to retrieve what he needed from him. “Your stash house in Queens. I want an address.” T’Challa demanded, and clearly far from willing to ask a second time.
“Just get me to a $%^&*$ hospital first man, please! I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, on god!” Jaz pleaded, the agony from T’Challa’s gunshots mixing with his fear of the masked man walking towards him.
“I have no idea why you would assume this was some sort of negotiation.” T’Challa stomped down on one of the injured kneecaps, careful to only use the smallest fraction of his strength. That was more than enough to cause Jaz to howl in complete misery, begging for T’Challa to stop. “I hope that is enough to demonstrate that this is not.”
“Alright, ALRIGHT! 8907 Styles Drive. The bottom half of a beat-up duplex. I got some people waiting for some work to be picked up. Now PLEASE drop me at the hospital man.” T’Challa ignored Jaz’s plea of utmost desperation and turned back to his bike on his boot heels. He got atop the skybike, revving it to life before casting one last look in Jaz’s direction.
“EMTs are en route, no doubt followed by the police. Tell them what you’ve told me. Or you’ll see me again.” The bike streaked off the rooftop and disappeared into the thick clouds above the city. Sirens wailed closer and closer to the building while Jaz wondered through his misery how his luck had changed so drastically.
# # # # # # # # # #
Lieutenant Kana Zhou pulled into the employee parking lot of the 45th NYPD precinct, right in the middle of Harlem. She tossed the Bahama breeze pen that she’d illegally acquired from a Canadian seller she’d caught on racketeering a couple of years prior. Smoke flaring out her nostrils, she walked through the parking lot trying to sort through the call that she’d gotten on her night off.
Someone beat the hell out of a dozen men she knew were under the employ of one of her biggest and most frequent pain in the asses, a mid-level trafficker known as Jaz. Even more troubling to a few different degrees was someone had kneecapped Jaz and dropped him off on the rooftop of the Marcy Projects building. There had been similar reports for months, as recent as just a few weeks prior, and they were becoming the kind of headache Lieutenant Zhou didn’t have the time or manpower to deal with.
Whoever had been causing all these waves over the last few months had to be working his way up the ladder, She guessed as she entered her office and pulled off her coat. Jaz was just the latest rung on his way to the top. Zhou decided after looking through the reports from the apartment scuffle that it was high time this rogue party was handled.
A knock on her door brought her attention away from the file in her hands. “Come on in.” She yelled to her visitor before the door swung open. Detective Ellerby entered with two cups of coffee in hand, one of which she slid across the captain’s desk to her.
“You had a minute to compose yourself before looking through that shit?” The detective asked between sips from his mug. “Because you know fucking with Jaz going to come with receipts, right?”
Zhou sighed and grabbed the mug off her desk. “Yeah which is why whoever this fucking maniac is trying to poke the bear, we need him off the streets faster than she’ll want him.” Zhou made her assessment plain to Ellerby, the emphasis on the second pronoun in her sentence made it clear to him exactly who the lieutenant was referring to.
Ellerby snorted. He didn’t like where the lieutenant was about to go with the unit’s focus, but he understood why she felt that way. Zhou had her rank because she prioritized the safety of everyone over anything else, even common sense at times. Still, this never made her step a toe over the line, which was an ever-growing rarity in any precinct these days. Hell, Ellerby figured it probably always was, more than ever in this city.
“Jazz is a cog in possibly the biggest heroin trafficking system in the entire state. You sure you wanna take our eyes off him being handed to us on a platter and focus on who did the handing?” Ellerby’s feelings got the better of him and he decided to voice them.
Zhou raised an eyebrow at him, surprised by his gumption. “You got a problem with my assessment, detective?”
“I’m just wondering where our priorities are at, ma’am.” Ellerby corrected himself, making sure he showed his superior her due respect.
“Our priorities are on people who may incite more violence in our city streets. No matter who their targets may be.” Zhou shot back firmly to quash any more of Ellerby’s needling.
Before he could reply a second knock at the door interrupted their conversation. Detective Crawford hurried into the lieutenant’s office, looking frazzled and out of breath. “Lieutenant, you’re gonna want to get to Yonkers, fast.”
Zhou nearly leaped out of her chair and rushed around her desk, snatching her coat back off the rack while passing both detectives back out of the office.
Twenty minutes later Zhou stepped under police tape before walking into the bottom unit of a red-bricked duplex. The iron-wrought screen door had been blown off its hinges, and the door behind it kicked in and on the other side of the living room. Zhou took in the sights around her and attempted to piece together what could have torn through this drop house.
Forensics did their best to stay out of the lieutenant’s path, letting her take in the carnage at her own pace. Thankfully no one was killed during whatever chaos had torn through there, and Zhou had an inkling as to where that chaos might have come from prior. One she sought to confirm as she turned towards the officers who arrived on the scene first. “Any of them talking?”
One of the officers shook her head with regret at her answer. “Nothing but mumbles about some dude in all black Same shit we been hearing all across town lately.”
Zhou snorted annoyed and refusing to dance in circles. She had options on the table to get to the bottom of both these incidents. She was going to exhaust every last one. “Ellerby!” She called over her shoulder. The detective wrapped his conversation with one of the neighbors and hurried over to Lieutenant Zhou. “Jaz conscious enough to talk yet?”
“Last thing we heard from Mercy Medical was that he was coherent.” Ellerby retorted. Positive news that Zhou needed to hear, she gave her next orders.
“Made sure we got a solid unit watching him. I want you and Berlatto to go talk to him, and don’t walk out of that room without something.” Ellerby nodded. “Once I’m done here I’ll head back to the precinct and talk to Blu myself. We can reconvene from there.”
Ellerby walked back out of the duplex to track down his partner, leaving Zhou to continue her breakdown of the assault committed on the men working this drop house. Who was capable of breaking this many armed gunmen nearly in half, and still leaving them breathing with the fear of god in their hearts?
Zhou knew even in a city like this, there weren’t a whole lot of people who could do that. And what concerned her the most was if whoever this wraith knew who he was painting a target on his back from. The fallout from all this could be catastrophic and Zhou wanted to cut that water off before it got any further upstream.
# # # # # # # # # #
T’Challa stepped out of a private freight elevator with his skybike parked next to him, and into a highrise apartment. The uniform melted off the body of T’Challa once he removed the golden and black kimoyo beads around his left wrist, attaching itself to the only mannequin without one of the Panther costumes adorning it already. He strode through his apartment now in his favorite silk robes with matching pants and slippers. He watched the sun come up over the city, peering in through all three of his half-arch windows on the far side of the main living room. His personal kimoyo network connection came to life as he enjoyed his view of the Brooklyn skyline.
“Good morning, my king. Emergency service channel monitoring indicates your hunts last night had various degrees of success.” T’Challa’s kimoyo AI, JOI, greeted him before a massive hologram home screen appeared behind him. On the screen was a video of Brooklyn PD hauling Blu and a half dozen others out of the apartment highrise T’Challa ran through first, as well as various news outlets both on local television and internet channels reporting on what little the police trickled out for them.
“Success is subjective. From my perspective, my activities have been fruitless.” T’Challa replied with a heavy sigh. He turned around and brought his attention to the hologram board. With the swipe of his hand, he brought up the mug shot taken of Blu last night, paying close attention to where he was being held. “Although with the drugs I disposed of last night, maybe I’ve finally dealt a blow big enough that the bankrolls behind these operations will start to show their hand.”
“Unfortunately my king, the network has been unsuccessful in tracing deposits to Jaz’s bank accounts. They are being bounced through multiple firewalls and shell accounts before they even get to him.” JOI informed T’Challa, who took the disappointment in stride and decided to cook up his next strategy then and there.
“The drop house wasn’t enough. I need to know who is above Jaz in the pecking order and get me to the source of these drugs eating through the city. I doubt the police will have enough to keep Blu, and once he’s released, he’ll do one of two things: Run like hell from whoever will want retribution for all the money lost last night, or go straight to them seeking forgiveness and asylum from the police and myself.” T’Challa was sound in his deductions, or at least he’d hoped they were sound.
Unfortunately for him, he was going to have to wait until after his first class of the morning to see if his theories would prove to be worth their weight in the time he spent on them. He realized if he didn’t leave in the next few minutes most of his students would be arriving and waiting on their professor.
He slipped out of his house shoes and moved with a graceful quickness fit of the beast that his country chose as its totem towards his bedroom. He browsed through his closet for a moment or two before emerging in a crisp plum Ralph Lauren suit. The wave patterns in his hair now perfectly greased and in semi-circle designs, he put the finishing touches on his teaching assemble with a pair of seemingly ordinary reading glasses.
In truth, he’d replaced the frames AR glass that kept him further connected remotely to the kimoyo network. He re-entered the living room and grabbed his briefcase off the kitchen counter. “Keep an eye on the courthouse where Blu will be arraigned. Notify me if and when he is released, JOI.”
“Understood my king.” The network AI assured him as he stepped back into the elevator and closed its gate.
# # # # # # # # # #
Deep in the center of Harlem, on the mayor’s desk, the telephone rang. An expensively and freshly manicured hand reached out to grab it, but instead opted to place it on speaker phone. “Christina, I thought I told you to hold all my calls this morning. No one should know I’m here already.” A shrill, stern voice told whom she believed to be her receptionist checking about a call for her. Her annoyance only grew when the caller was not Christine, but someone who managed to get the direct number to her line in city hall. A voice she recognized the moment he spoke.
“I think we both got some business we might want to attend to. And seeing as how you in ya office at the crack of dawn, you probably worried about the same shit as me.” The voice playfully teased, waiting to see how she would respond.