by Roy Glenn
“Don’t feel like that, Wanda. We never even told Black. But you know Black, he found out anyway.”
“Found out what, Nick?”
“Back in the day, me and Freeze did a little freelancing.”
“What kind of freelancing, Nick?”
Even though we still sorta worked for André, who was one of the biggest drug dealers around in those days, Black absolutely forbid any of us to have any direct involvement with drugs. Black made his money high jacking trucks, robbing warehouses and payrolls. We all made crazy money, but me and Freeze wanted to, needed to, make some money on our own.
“So what we gonna do, Nick? We can’t roll, so how we gonna get paid?” Freeze asked.
We kicked around a bunch of stuff, but everything we thought of, either wasn’t worth the risk or wasn’t enough paper to make it worth the effort. It all came back around to the fact that fast, easy money was spelled D-R-U-G-S. Then it came to me.
“Look, who’s making the money?”
“Dope boys,” Freeze replied.
“Right, so why can’t we get that money?”
“’Cause Black will kill us if we started rollin’, that’s why. And don’t you say that he’ll never find out. That mutha fucka is psychic about that shit. You ain’t forget what we did to Banks when Black found out he was dealin’?
“No, I ain’t forget. But who said anything about us dealin’?”
“You did.”
“No, I didn’t. I said, why can’t we get that money? There’s a difference. You interested?”
“I’m listening.”
“Dope boys rollin’ around every day with stupid cash on them. I’m talkin’ about rollin’ up on them and robbin’ them niggas while they laid back.”
“You talkin’ about rollin’ up on a bunch of heavily armed mutha fucka’s while they do business? That ain’t no plan, that’s suicide.”
“You ain’t scared are you, Freeze?”
“Hell no!”
“I didn’t think so. But I ain’t talkin’ about hittin’ them while they doing business, that would be suicide. I’m talkin’ about catching them coming out their cars. They get out the car and bam, we hit them quick and bam we out.”
“That could work. I mean we know who they are. I don’t like most of them niggas anyway. And as long as we don’t take their dope, Black won’t have shit to say.”
So it was set.
Me and Freeze became stickup kids. We’d hit two or three a night, sometimes. And the money was good, three to five grand a pop for a minutes work. Most times, we never had to fire a shot. But after a while, word got around and things started to dry up. The money was less, and the security was more. But we were addicted to that cash.
So the plan changed.
We started robbing them while they were selling quantity. Things were going good; it was easier than we thought. Except for this one time. We overheard a guy, who used to call himself Forty-Eight, who had a real high, squeaky kinda voice, talking about he had some white guys on the hook, and he was gonna retire on the money he was gonna make.
“You mean we gonna take.” Freeze said to me, making fun of the way Forty-Eight talked.
We sat and watched as the players went into a motel room on Boston Road. Once the deal was in progress, we busted in.
“Nobody move! Nobody gets hurt!” Freeze shouted.
I looked at the guy carrying the briefcase with the money. Forty-eight and his boy raised their hands and backed away from the dope. But the two white guys with the money started beefin’.
“If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk out that door quietly.” And then he made a play for his gun.
Freeze wheeled around. “Shut up, white bread!” He hit him in the mouth with the pump. “You’re speaking out of turn.”
I covered with the semi while Freeze grabbed the case and we backed out of the room. It wasn’t long after we got out of the room before somebody started blastin’. I fired back while Freeze headed for the car. The gunfight continued until we were in the car and away.
We both looked at each other and started laughing.
“That was getting kinda hectic.” Freeze said as he drove away. “Must be a lotta money in that case for them to have backup outside.”
“I think this is the biggest score we ever had,” I said, as I opened the case. “Maybe we can retire.” Making fun of the way Forty-Eight talked.
We were both laughing so hard that neither of us noticed the black Ford that pulled up alongside of us. Until they started blastin’. With the first shot, they busted out the back window on the passenger side.
“Where the fuck did they come from!”
“I don’t know!” Freeze yelled as he floored it. He sped down Boston Road with the Ford on our tail.
“Get us out of here, Freeze!”
“What you think I’m doing, writing a love song?” Freeze turned sharply against traffic, but they stayed right with us. He turned on 222nd and then back onto Boston Road.
“You see them?” Freeze demanded to know.
“No, I think you lost them.”
“Damn right, I did! I told you I’d lose them!” That was when the back window got shot out.
“Shit!”
Freeze turned on Eastchester Road and kept going until he hit Laconia Avenue. “I thought we lost them?”
“You did. These are different guys.”
“What do you mean, different guys?”
“That it’s not the same guys. It’s a different car. Blue Chevy, coming up on your right.” I began firing through the now opened back window. Trying to get them off us. But they kept coming. “Turn here! Try to lose them in the projects!”
Freeze turned on 229th Street and drove through Edenwald Projects. “Damn! These guys are good.” He couldn’t shake them. We came out of the projects and back onto Laconia, up 219th and onto Bronxwood Avenue.
“Who the fuck are they?” I asked.
“I don’t know! How the fuck should I know?”
“You just lose them.” A car pulled out in front of us and we crashed into a parked car. I grabbed the case and we got out blastin’. “This way!”
“I ain’t going down there, there are dogs down there!”
“Shoot them! Let’s go!” I yelled as I started running down the alley.
“Look out!” Freeze yelled. I turned quickly, in time to see that two more guys were shooting at us. I caught one in the shoulder.
“Ahhh! Shit!”
If I hadn’t turned when Freeze yelled, it would have hit me in the chest.
“You hit?”
“Yeah, in the shoulder! I’m all right, keep going!”
I could hear the dogs barking in front of us and the guys firing behind us. I started firing in both directions. The barking stopped and the dogs ran in the opposite direction. But the guys kept coming. Freeze ran toward the building and shot the lock off. We ran through the building and out the front door. A car came down the street. Freeze stood in the middle of the street with his gun drawn.
The car stopped in front of him.
“Get out!”
Both doors swung open and the people ran away from the car.
The guys came out the door and opened fire on us again. This time it was Freeze who got hit. He went down.
“Freeze!” I yelled and ran toward him, shooting that semi-auto wildly in their direction.
They took cover.
I kept shooting.
I pulled Freeze up and pushed him in the car, got in and drove away. I looked over at Freeze. “Where you hit?”
“In the gut! Shit this hurts. They got me in the leg too.”
“Who the fuck are they?”
“How many times you gonna ask me that shit? I told you I don’t know!”
“They still on us?”
Freeze struggled to turn around; he was bleeding pretty bad. “I don’t see anybody.”
I drove around for a while to make sure we’d really lost them, w
hoever they were, this time. Then drove as fast as I could to Perry’s house. Freeze had passed out at some point, so I had to carry him. He was in pretty bad shape. Perry said if it had been a little longer, he’d be dead. He took care of our wounds and I made him promise not to tell Black, but he found out anyway.
“You saved his life, and he saved yours.”
“That’s just one more reason why we’re so tight.”
“You ever find out who those guys were?” Wanda asked.
“Yeah. They were cops. They had a sting set up on Forty-Eight. We just picked the wrong guy to rob that time.”
Chapter Sixteen
Monday July 20: 4:42 PM
I slept late the next day. It was well into the afternoon before I finally rolled out of bed. It was almost five and I was still feeling a little groggy from the pain pills I had gotten from Perry. I thought about going back to bed, but I picked up the phone and checked my messages.
Felicia had called and left me this message:
“The least you could have done was call me and let me know that you made it back safely. Anyways, I didn’t call to fuss. I just wanted to say that I miss being with you. Bye-bye, honey.”
I was really starting to like Felicia Hardy and I missed being with her too. I started to call her back, but then I remembered the last time I started feeling this way about a woman. I hung up the phone and called Mrs. Childers instead. It had been more than a week since the last time I saw or talked to her.
I left a message on her voice mail and asked her to meet me at Sparks Steak House on 46th Street around nine. I was a little late getting there and much to my surprise, she was there, looking impeccable as usual. “Hello, Nick.”
“Hello, Mrs. Childers. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting very long?”
“I’ve been here about a half hour. But that’s okay, I wanted to get out of the house anyway. Have a seat.”
“Thank you.” Once I was seated, her smile turned to a frown. I guess she noticed the cuts and bruises on my face.
“What happened to you?”
“I ran into some people who had something to prove.”
“It looks like they did a good job. Are you all right?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“What have you found out for me, Nick?”
“Well, Mrs. Childers, I don’t think your brother is missing, or that anything happened to him. I think Jake is somewhere hiding.”
“What makes you say that?”
“He was involved with Chilly in some type of scheme to develop synthetic crack.”
“Synthetic crack?” she looked at me strangely. “I’ve got a good idea, but just what exactly is synthetic crack?”
“Basically, Mrs. Childers, it’s crack without the cocaine.”
“How is that possible?”
“I really don’t understand how the formula works; your brother is the chemist. But the long and short of it is, that it didn’t work. At least seven people have died from it.”
“Pamela?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not possible. Pamela didn’t use drugs.”
“I know that, but I believe that anybody who knew anything about it had to die. Pamela was just running with the wrong people.”
“I’ll try not to take that personally.” She rolled her eyes at me and turned away, but she turned back quickly. “If that’s the case, then what makes you think that Jake isn’t dead too?”
“Because Chilly is still looking for him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me.” I thought about telling her that he gave me five grand to find Jake, but she didn’t need to know that. Or the fact that he had somebody keeping tabs on her account, and that Chilly wanted to know about the money that she gave Ben Josephs. “Anyway, as far as I could tell, Chilly hasn’t killed him. But he is nowhere to be found. So I guess that concludes our business.”
“I guess it does” Mrs. Childers said and gave me a strange look. “Did you talk to Rocky?”
“That’s something else I wanted to ask you.”
“What’s that?”
“What type of relationship do you have with Rocky?”
“He’s a friend of Jake’s. Why?”
“Your friend?”
“Well—”
“Well?”
“Well, not really. Me and Rocky don’t speak to each other anymore. We haven’t spoken since before I left Philly.”
“Why?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Mrs. Childers, you made all of this my business. What happened between you two?” She frowned up and looked away. The waiter finally came to take my order. “Hennessy Martini for the lady, and I’ll have Johnnie Black, straight up.” Once the waiter departed to get our drinks, I went back to the question. “What happened, Mrs. Childers?”
She rolled her eyes and looked away. “Do you remember me telling you that I did some things that I’m not proud of to get away from Philly?”
“And?”
“I asked Rocky for the money so I could get away from there. He told me he would give me the money and that I should come by his apartment to pick it up. When I got there, he tells me to come in the bedroom. When we get in there, he tells me that I could have the money, but I had to fuck him first.”
“Pathetic.”
“I was a virgin, Nick, so I told him that I couldn’t do that. I started to leave, but I wanted to get away from Philly and I knew that nobody else was gonna give me the money. So I did it. I cried the whole time, but he didn’t care. After he was done with me, Rocky said he was sorry and gave me the money. I took it and left.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed it.” What else could I say?
“No, you shouldn’t have.” When the waiter returned with our drinks, Mrs. Childers drank hers down like water. “Can we get out of here?”
“Sure. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t care, anywhere.” She threw some money on the table. “Just come ride with me.” She got up without waiting for an answer. I shot my drink and headed out the door behind her.
We drove around for a while and ended up at her house in Nyack. After she opened up the house, she went to make us a drink. I sat on the couch and watched her as she poured. I had noticed that she wasn’t making eye contact with me when she talked. There was fear and uncertainty in her eyes. She handed me my drink and sat down across from me and started to talk.
We drank and like I said, she talked for over an hour and then she stopped. She got up and walked over to the French doors. I walked over to her and touched her arm. It seemed to startle her.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, just wondering what you must think of me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what do you think of me, Nick?”
“I don’t know, I think you’re nice. Very pretty.”
“Is that all you see in me, Nick. A pretty face … nice. Nice to look at, but not much more, right?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to, because it’s the truth. That’s all I’ve ever been is pretty. Oh look at Gabrielle, she’s so pretty. All my life I’ve gotten by on my looks.”
“You ain’t all that now.” I knew I had touched a nerve, so I tried to make light of it. “I was just being nice when I said you were pretty.”
“Very pretty, that’s what you said, Nick.” She laughed. “You said I was very pretty.”
“I was lying, ’cause you look like you been hit in the face with a bag of quarters. I bet little children scream and run to their mothers when they see your ugly ass.”
“Stop it, Nick. I’m not that bad. And besides, it wasn’t a bag of quarters, it was a fist.”
“I know, I was trying to be nice about it. But I can see, and I see that makeup doesn’t hide everything.”
She looked away from me and stared into her drink. “I’ve never been in control of
my life, Nick. I went from my father’s house to Chilly’s. The first day I met him, he told me that I was the prettiest woman he’d ever seen. From that day on, I never wanted for anything. After a lifetime of being told no, you can’t or that’s not for you, Gabrielle. Everything was yes. All because I was pretty. But that’s all I was. All I’ve ever been. I was just something for him to show off to his peeps. To look good on his arm. I don’t have a life of my own. That’s Chilly’s wife, Mrs. Childers, even to you, Nick. To you I’m Mrs. Childers. Well I’m not, my name is Gabrielle. My friends call me Gee. Since I’m not your client anymore, it’s time you started calling me Gee too.”
“Okay, Gee. Why don’t you get me another drink?”
“I didn’t say you could start ordering me around,” she said, snatching the glass out of my hand. “Want any ice?”
“No, just Hennessy will be fine.”
Mrs. Childers handed me my drink and sat down next to me. “You’ve never told Chilly that story about you and Rocky, have you?”
“He’d kill Rocky if I told him. I never told anybody. Not Jake, not even Chéz. You’re the first.”
“What makes me so special?”
“I don’t know. I’ve told you a lot of things about me, Nick. Shame that none of it is good. But that’s the way it is.”
“There must be some happiness in your life.”
“You tell me what there is to be happy about? I live in fear, Nick. I never know when Chilly’s gonna snap. Sometimes he can be so sweet to me and other times he’s like a nightmare.”
“Maybe it’s time you wake up.”
“Maybe. Maybe it is time to get my life back.”
She began to cry.
“I never meant for things to turn out the way they did. You have to believe that, Nick. It was never supposed to happen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Huh?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing.” She got up and poured herself another drink. “I’ve been babbling on like a fool. I am a fool.”
“When are you gonna tell me the truth, Mrs. Childers? I mean, Gee.”
“I have told you the truth, Nick.” The tears were gone.
“I don’t think so. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me the truth.”