Macktown: The Lawson - Towns War

By Colin Royce

Book Three explodes to reveal what really went down to bring the Lawson - Towns War to the surface. Not only did Humphrey Lawson learn that politics can be a dirty game, but he learned that community organization could clean up the streets and city hall. As he pushed his Pip army to take the streets of his city, Macktown back from those who invaded them, he had to reach down deep inside and face his past; a past that no one dared tell him for fear of who he really was. As a sequel to books one and two, The Lawson - Towns War ends with hard truth, empowered characters, and many more challenges ahead.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312142527

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Macktown: The Lawson - Towns War

MACKTOWN

The Lawson-Towns War

BY COLIN ROYCE

Copyright 2013 by City Ministry

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

Prologue

This is the tale of two ghetto cities. Both these cities have kings with underworld empires; with both kings operating under the rules of a society gone wrong lead by men with the same goals in mind; power and control. When all three worlds clash in a struggle to make the loudest statement, the subjects are caught in the middle and suffer the consequences of greed, oppression and violence. However, in any world where civility has gone astray, the hopes and voices of reason always rise to shout its own statement aloud.

PART ONE

Up In Banglewood

Introduction

Banglewood was considered Macktown’s sister city. They were built a few years apart for the same purpose, international importing and exporting because they were both built on open waterways. Going west on the Franklin Freeway from Macktown would get you to Banglewood in forty-five minutes. The city's skyline could be seen in the distance after you entered the city limits. The Franklin Freeway stood on columns as it rode high above the Oliver Yancy Government Zone and then it dropped just above the Deep End River and landed into the heart of downtown Banglewood. The city was divided into three sections, called Zones; the Yancy Government Zone, which was beneath the Franklin Freeway, the Gables, which was just on the other side of downtown, and the Evander Gardens Zone, which was a suburban area in the upper area of the city. The city was divided into Zones because the City Planner designed it to make tax collection easier and more organized, and this political and economic division automatically sectioned off the city residences by income and class. The Oliver Yancy Government Zone consisted mostly of the recipients of government funded programs that made it easy for the city officials to track spending of all the government funds they received from the state. The Gables was an experimental Zone by which the city officials tried new government programs for its residences, even though many of the residences were working-class people. And the Evander Gardens Zone was home for the residences that were self-sufficient, higher income folks and a gated community haven for the government officials themselves. Aside from the government funds, Banglewood's main source of income came from the importing system in place at the Deep End River shipping docks. Various goods were shipped to Banglewood and then distributed via tractor trailers to other cities on the east coast. One other source of city income came from taxing the owners and agents of Banglewood's number one recreational activity; boxing.

Unlike Macktown, Banglewood's underworld was much different. Where Macktown's rackets consisted of dog fight wagering, illegal dog racing booking, prostitution and weed and Nico dealing, Banglewood's underworld supported rogue bookies for boxing matches, illegal street fighting, called Blows, and crack cocaine dealing. Of course, corrupt city officials had their hands in on the rackets and taxed the gangsters double; sometimes triple for the illegal activities to remain low key. The most taxed and connected Banglewood gangster was Hank Towns. Towns was involved in all the rackets; cocaine dealing being his main hustle. He was also tied in real tight as a bookie for wagers on boxing matches and on the street fighting game, but at the top of the blows game was Tony Segal, a hard core street punk from the Gables, who also sold cocaine. Towns and Segal were the top dogs of the only two organized crime gangs in Banglewood after each of them had eliminated all the others. At present they were bumping heads for control of the crack and blows rackets. Hank Town's crew was made up of mostly his family. He had three brothers and two young nephews, who were also brothers, and a niece, and they were all involved in the game. There were also a few childhood partners that rolled with him and many of his members were from the Oliver Yancy projects and the surrounding area of the Oliver Yancy Government Zone. The Yancy projects were the one and only government housing projects in the city and they were massive. Sitting on the banks of the Deep End River and spreading about one mile outward, they were statistically the most dangerous government projects on the east coast. The buildings were a dingy yellow with brown trim and dirt stood where grass use to be. There was a park in the dead center of the projects which was the nucleus of the crack cocaine empire Towns had built. Rarely would the police venture into Yancy and when they did it was usually with a warrant. The post office stopped delivering mail inside the projects and built a long mailbox unit just outside the entrance where the residences had to get their mail, and if they lived toward the back by the River or even in the middle of the projects, they had to drive or get a ride to do so. The rest of the Zone was a concrete asylum laid out on a checkerboard grid of dirty, red brick two-story, two-family flats; second rate businesses, including many government-owned liquor stores, mental health clinics, and shelters. Homelessness and drug addiction was rampant and crime and unemployment were the highest in the state.

The Gables Zone was better but not by much. The Zone itself was further divided into two precincts to keep things in perspective for the government experiments. Precinct Ten is where the experiments were done but Precinct Twenty was home to the working class folks who worked at the Deep End River ship yards, at small private businesses or had low-level government jobs. And Precinct Twenty had no experiments. The experiments were actually test trails for new government programs such as school and welfare to work transitioning, which moved students from high school and the recipients of government money to entry-level jobs and government positions in Precinct Twenty. In the process, the subjects were indoctrinated on how to think and behave as an acceptable citizen, law abiding and productive. If they succeeded, they were able to afford a standard of living in Precinct Twenty and if they failed, they were dumped back into the Yancy Zone to start over. To be dumped back into Yancy, the subject must have had to resist the mental conditioning of government. The Tens, as they called it, consisted of rows of small single family homes and matched the Yancy Zone in crime and unemployment rates. The Twenties also had small single family homes but the employment and crime rates were much lower and had better businesses and shopping areas. Tony Segal controlled the streets of the Tens and most parts of the Twenties with a large crew of street bangers and gangsters called the Eighties. He grew through the ranks of the crew after years of the street fighting and hustling and made a name for himself throughout the city, and he was now pushing his way to the top of the dope game; however, there was a major interruption to his plan and it was not Hank Towns.

The Evander Gardens Zone of Banglewood was the nicest area of the city. Trees gave breath to the neighborhood and rolling hills and man-made lakes provided fitness activities for the residences. Golf courses and new playgrounds and parks also gave life to the families that lived there. It was a suburbia laid with the best shopping of all the major chain stores and restaurants, the modern office parks and clean factories offered endless employment and of course, the Gardens got the most attention from the city officials. The pride of Evander Gardens was Oliver Yancy University. It was a billion dollar campus with all the state of the art technology and was almost Ivy League status. Only the financially fortunate of the surround area could attend. Oliver Yancy himself built and graduated from the university and started the Yancy foundation that flourished to this day. He was the American success story of a young boy who grew up on a farm plantation and followed in the footsteps of his father and became a profitable business man. After inheriting the family radio station that his grandfather owned when he was granted credit and was given one of the first broadcasting licenses ever given out to credit worthy citizens of that day, Yancy was the shining example of hard work as an honest citizen that the Banglewood founders and officials wanted to present as an example to its residences. The problem was, not all the residences believed in that example. They believed that that opportunity was only available to certain people with certain qualities and status quo positions in life, which brought forth a government resistance movement within Banglewood.

NOPE, the National Organization of People Empowerment made noise over the past few years and were growing strong against government control. Organized and led by a young brother name Cyrus Price, NOPE was not the typical civil rights organization. They did not march on city hall or boycott businesses, they felt those methods would not work because they have not worked in the past. Their methods were more effective because they made powerful statements through various means of public display. The city government had started to take notice of them after the organization managed to shut down the city's subway and bus system for one whole day by painting the windows of the front trains yellow and letting the air out of all the city buses. This was the first time any mass group of people had ever gotten the attention of city officials with a move that caused them to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of revenue. So as of now, NOPE had begun devising their next move to push against and expose the corruption they saw within Banglewood. They were based out of the Gables and were starting to spread their message to the Yancy Zone but they needed a way in the Zone without being seen as a threat. Cyrus had to make a connection to someone in Yancy and he knew the only person to reach was Hank Towns. If he could convince Towns of his message and purpose, he was sure he could gain a massive following, and possibly some financing. But Towns was not in the market nor mind set for negotiation or compromise. He had a problem of his own that needed to be dealt with before anything else; a personal and a business problem simultaneously. His niece had just recently been kidnapped and drugged with crack cocaine and he was extremely pissed off. She was dropped in an alley outside of the projects at three o’clock in the morning and now she has problems getting back to her normal self because of the trauma and her new addiction. Towns understood the message being sent to him by who did the deed; that his dealing crack cocaine was destroying his own people, but he totally resented how the message was sent. Now it was time for this message boy to feel the power of Yancy.

Chapter 1

The Yancy Dudes were project hoodlums. They were new age gangsters. They did not kick back and hang in plush, swanky night clubs or on swinging avenue strips or neon-lit boulevards, no. They did not have that kind of class. They lived and breathed the projects. In the very back of the dingy, yellow government colony off the banks of the Deep End River was an unused maintenance warehouse that they converted into a makeshift headquarters. Hank Towns concluded years ago that if he was not seen, he could not be touched, and there was no better place to hide than in the stronghold of the Yancy projects. No one, not even the police during certain times, dared to venture through the entrance gates looking for Hank Towns, let alone have heart enough to travel the entire length of the projects to the very back where he was. Towns called all his shots from the warehouse. He was just comfortable that way. If he had to leave the projects, it was usually to meet someone about something particularly important, or to kill someone personally. He was not the club and party type dude nor a socialite who flashed his style or paraded his financial success with cars and suits and stuff. Towns was a private man. He handled all his business in his mind and then sent one of his brothers or Yancy boys to represent. They were also low key, no nonsense men of business. Neither did they draw attention to themselves; however, they did create a style that was copied by many young street thugs in Banglewood. They rolled in jeeps and dressed in track suits, Kango hats and sported thick gold chains around their necks with medallions hanging down. They were known by these trademarks all over the city.

The sunset hit the projects just right. It was about seventy degrees and the scene was the same; kids on the playground, people on their porches, and walking up and down the streets talking, laughing, living. One of the two dock doors were open at the Yancy warehouse with three black jeeps parked against the dock wall. Two dudes hung out around the open dock doors and just inside the warehouse the figures of four dudes could be seen sitting at a long card table. A guy ran from around the warehouse and up the dock stairs. He started walking inside and over to the guy at the end of the table. He stood and spoke to him for a moment then walked back out and back around the building. The guy he spoke to was Hank Towns. And what he told him was what Hank had been waiting to hear all that day; that his niece was out of the hospital. It was two nights ago that she was found lying against a dumpster in an alley cracked out of her mind after two days of being missing. When the word got to Towns, he had her sent to the hospital to be checked for abuse and detoxed of the drugs. While he was at the hospital, the nurse handed Towns a note she found in his niece’s jacket pocket and gave it to him. The note was addressed to him telling him to ‘Get the fuck out of Macktown.’ From those words Towns knew who the author was and those same words set in motion a thoroughly devised plan of revenge that Towns had been working on since. Towns was not particularly a patience man, however; and at times was hasty in his actions. But before he made any moves, he needed to make one of those particular trips outside of Yancy to go see his niece.

Hank stood up from the table. He was six-two and a hundred and eighty pounds of muscle. His square head held up his black Kango Dobbs hat tilted to the side. He, and the rest of his brothers, was a light brown complexion, but Hank was the only one with facial scars and a shine to his tone. His cheeks were fat; his eyes were beady and sat above his round, wide nostrils. And a cigar hung from between his thick lips at all times. The other guys stood up and Hank told one of them to pull down the dock doors. His voice was scratchy when he talked. He started toward the back stairs with a slight limp when he walked. Two of the three guys at the table were his brothers and the other guy was one of his boys. Buford Towns was a couple of years younger than Hank, he was thirty-three and Hank was thirty-five. Buford looked just like Hank but was an inch taller and about ten pounds lighter. They called Buford, Lakeside; his mother nick-named him that because that is where he was born; by the side of a lake. Lakeside was not as cool and collective as Hank; he was much more temperamental, easy to anger and hasty in his actions. Many times Hank and his other brother, Bernard, would have to calm Lakeside down before he made a bad move. Bernard, on the other hand, was more like Hank, cool and easy going. They called Bernard Peewee because he was the youngest and smallest of the brothers. He was quiet, but a fighter, a banger and was often the one who initiated things when they needed to be initiated. Peewee was not afraid of anything or anybody. Because of these traits, he was the chosen front man for the Yancy Dudes. He pulled hard on the garage door and it slammed shut, then he walked over and slapped the lights off in the warehouse. Peewee always had a grin on his face. He looked a lot like Hank and Lakeside, square head, fat cheeks, wide nostrils, but he sported a neatly trimmed moustache and bread, unlike Hank or Lakeside.

Hank and Lakeside walked to one of the jeeps and got in and waited for Peewee and Books, the other of the three guys. Jackson Demps, alias Books, was totally out of his element as a Yancy Dude. He was not a thug type at all; he was as nerdy as they come. How he ended up running with Hank Towns was always an interesting story. Like most nerds do, Books wore thick glasses. He was tall, lean and very dark and had a long, thin face. His eyes were large behind the glasses and his nose stuck out a half inch extra. Books vowed his life to Hank when they were about fifteen years old. One night Hank stopped a bully from throwing Books onto the train tracks at the Dozer station. If it had been ten seconds later that Hank showed up, Books would be dead this day because the guy was literally trying to kill him. It was over something as petty as a subway token but as far as Books was concerned, it was worth his life. From that day he hung around Hank and when Hank pushed him aside he hung around his brothers to get to Hank. Over time, Books grew on Hank and started doing him favors like going to the store for him, making calls for him and such things, it was as if Books was Hanks personal secretary. As the Yancy Dudes became more organized and started making money in the millions, Books hung in there and helped with any of Hanks legitimate business needs. Books was a graduate of Banglewood Community College and had an Associate’s degree in business accounting. He did not have a job because he did