Instead, the ever highly strung Kareem suddenly uncoiled like a black mamba on muscle relaxants, waxing nostalgically on the first hero he’d ever wanted to emulate—not Hawk King, but the Langston-Douglas legend Maximus Security. Rising to prominence as a crusader against neighborhood drug dealers and the “corrupt police” supposedly in collusion with them, Maximus Security left America in 1975 to fight alongside the MPLA in Angola. The young Kareem, then known only as Philip Edgerton, had idolized the maverick crimefighter throughout those overseas adventures and even more after his return to the neighborhood in 1977, following his every move and filling scrapbooks with everything he could find on the man. “Old people used to look at Brother Max and shake their heads,” laughed Kareem, imitating their scowls. “They thought he was gay. See, he used to wear this shiny yellow disco shirt open down to his navel, these tight blue pants, and this huge, oversized chain around his hips—”
