The Black Market

by Kiki Swinson

  “I agree with Sims,” Agent Montclair stated.

  Agent Sims continued. “He shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Do you know that he almost blew our whole investigation by running his mouth? In so many words, he told Ahmad that the feds are watching him.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Agent Montclair agreed.

  “Oh, so because Terrell almost blew this investigation, you’re sending me into the lion’s den with Ahmad?” I was fucking livid. But I was disgusted more than anything that these agents thought so little of me. This case was their number-one priority, regardless of whoever died. Fucking pieces of shit!

  “Calm down, Misty! We are not throwing you in the lion’s den. We will be with you every step of the way,” Agent Montclair said.

  “That’s bullshit and you know it!” I spat. My insides were boiling as I started pacing my living room floor.

  “Misty, if you want us to wrap this investigation up quicker, all you have to do is agree to go out on this date and we’ll take it from there,” Agent Sims chimed in.

  “You know that that’s a lie from the pits of hell!” I told him while I continued to walk back and forth from one end of my living room to the other. My living room wasn’t that big, so I was turning around more frequently than I would do if I were at my grandmother’s house.

  “Can you stop moving and listen to us?” Agent Sims asked.

  “For what? So you can continue to lie to me? And when am I supposed to go on this freaking dinner date?”

  “We were hoping that you’d do it tomorrow night.”

  “I can’t. My mother’s birthday is tomorrow and she’s cooking dinner.”

  “What about going out with him on a lunch date?”

  “I don’t know, you guys. This could be dangerous.”

  “Look, Misty, if you go out on the date with Ahmad, then you don’t have to do anything else for us,” Agent Sims stated.

  “What’s the catch?” I asked him after I stopped in my tracks.

  “You’re gonna have to get him to talk about where Sanjay is and other key players in his operation,” Agent Sims explained.

  “Are you out of your mind? I’m not asking him that bullshit! He’ll suspect that I was wired and then he’ll rip my fucking clothes off and see that I’m setting him up. And then without hesitation, he’s going to take my life just like that. Boom! Bullet to my skull.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what, if you could plant a couple of bugs in his car, that would do it for us.”

  “And put them where?”

  “Underneath your seat.”

  “But you said two. Where am I supposed to put the other one?”

  “In the back seat.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Yes. If you can do that, then we’re good.”

  “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “That’s because your ex-boyfriend has rattled your brain,” Agent Sims commented and then he chuckled. “Speaking of ex-boyfriend, I think you should let him do business with Ahmad.”

  “Is that a joke? Am I supposed to laugh?” I replied sarcastically.

  Agent Montclair laughed.

  “Okay, now I see you two got jokes. But I’m not in the mood to laugh, so if we’re done here, y’all can go on and leave,” I encouraged them.

  They both stood up. “I thought we were becoming friends,” Agent Sims commented.

  “Please don’t insult me,” I replied nonchalantly while I showed them the door.

  “Montclair, give her the wires and camera for work, and the other two bugs for Ahmad’s car,” Agent Sims instructed.

  “Everything is in that black bag on her coffee table,” Montclair pointed out.

  I looked back at the coffee table while I was escorting them to the front door.

  “Let us know when the date is set,” Sims said.

  “Yeah, I will,” I told them. “Fucking idiots!” I mumbled under my breath after I slammed my front door.

  28

  IT WAS AN ACCIDENT

  I knew it was too good to be true when Terrell walked out of the pharmacy earlier today, acting like everything was all good after Ahmad crushed his ego when he showed him his gun. Terrell had a lot of pride, so I knew I was going to hear his shit sooner than later.

  He started calling me like his mind was going bad after Agents Sims and Montclair left my apartment. I finally answered his call after the tenth time. “Terrell, what do you want?” I asked him.

  “Don’t pretend like you’re sleeping,” he said.

  “Who said I was asleep?”

  “Whatcha doing?”

  “I’m in my bed. Why?”

  “Because I just pulled up to your apartment. So open the door.”

  “Terrell, I’m not in the mood for your shit tonight. I had a long day and all I wanna do is go to sleep.”

  “Well, it’s too late. I’m here now. Open the door,” he instructed.

  “Terrell, I am not getting out of my bed to open the door. Now please go home.”

  “Girl, if you don’t open that door I am gonna cause a scene out here,” he warned me.

  “Well, go right on ahead and do it. My neighbors will call the cops on your ass so quick.”

  “Misty, stop playing with me and open your front door.”

  “For the last time, I am not getting out of my bed.”

  “If you don’t get out of that bed and open this front door, I’m gon’ go up to your job tomorrow and tell one of those Arab niggas that the feds are watching them.”

  “Terrell, are you fucking crazy?! Do you know what those guys would do to me?” I screamed through the phone. It felt like my whole life was about to run into a brick wall.

  “I don’t give a fuck about that. Open the motherfucking door.”

  “Get away from my house. You ain’t shit!” I continued to scream.

  BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! “You hear me knocking at the door, now open it,” he demanded.

  “Leave me alone! Go home! I don’t wanna see you!” I yelled.

  “Y’all neighbor named Misty Heiress is an FBI informant. If you’re selling drugs, she’s gonna snitch on you!” I heard him yell.

  My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach while I listened to this guy yell outside my front door that I was an FBI informant. Oh my God! I wondered if someone was listening.

  Fear-stricken, I hopped out of my bed and raced to the front door and snatched it open. “What the fuck are you trying to do to me?” I said, grinding my teeth.

  He pushed me backwards, walked into my apartment, and slammed the front door shut. “I knew I’d getcha ass to let me in after I said that,” he said, giving me a grimace.

  “So, you think that this is a game? You think that you can come to my apartment anytime you want and then try to smear my name to my neighbors like that’s cool? Yo dude, you got some fucking nerve,” I spat.

  “Did you think it was cool when that Arab nigga flexed his pistol at me? That nigga tried to play me like a punk or something.”

  “That’s because you wouldn’t shut your fucking mouth! You can’t walk around and talk to people any kind of way and expect them to deal with it. And what’s up with you and this FBI bullshit? I’m not a fucking informant, you piece of shit! And then to almost tell Ahmad that the feds is watching him was reckless as fuck! Do you know that if I wouldn’t have cleaned that shit up, he probably would’ve killed us both?”

  “That nigga wouldn’t have done shit! See, I’m a nigga from the streets and I don’t let no one intimidate me. Whatever I do, I’m man enough to pay the consequences. I don’t need to snitch on nobody.”

  “I’m not a fucking snitch!”

  “Then what are you? You ain’t no volunteer worker at an old folks’ home. You work with the DEA, remember,” Terrell said and then he smiled even more wicked.

  “Fuck you, Terrell! Get out of my house!” I demanded.

  “I ain’t going no fucking where,” he protested.

  I grabbed his
arm and tried pushing him toward the front door, but I couldn’t move him as effectively as I wanted because he was too big for me. He weighed at least seventy-five pounds more than me.

  “Terrell, if you don’t leave my apartment right now, I will call the police.”

  He threw out a compromise. “Give me some pussy and I’ll leave.”

  “Nigga, I wouldn’t fuck you with my mother’s pussy.”

  “What, you fucking another nigga?”

  “Don’t worry about who I’m fucking. Just know that it ain’t you, you fucking coward. All you do is run around town, picking up different bitches and talking reckless to people like you’re the man. And remember when you used to always get me to tell you how good your dick was? Well, it was garbage. It’s little and you don’t know shit about how to fuck me. I thought that maybe after a few times you’d get better at it, well it turns out that you didn’t. So, when I found out that you were cheating on me, that gave me my out for our relationship because I didn’t have the heart to tell you that you weren’t doing it for me. Now with all that said, leave my residence now.” I waited for his reaction.

  He stood there for a couple of seconds like he was trying to process everything that I had just said, so to me he wasn’t moving fast enough for me. I wanted him to get out of my face now. “Terrell, get the fuck out of my house!” I demanded and then I opened my front door. At one point, I thought he was going to leave after I ripped his heart out of his chest, but then he slammed my front door shut and backhanded me across my face with so much force that I went down to the floor in seconds.

  I scrambled to get back on my feet, but I couldn’t because Terrell crawled on top of me. “Get off me!” I screamed while I swung at him a few times with balled fists.

  “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” he said and grabbed my neck with both of his hands and started choking the air out of me.

  I started choking, trying to breathe at the same time. I even tried to use my strength to push him off me, but it wasn’t working. “Somebody help me!” I managed to belt out. But it wasn’t loud enough because Terrell applied more pressure to my neck.

  “Bitch, I said shut the fuck up!” He gritted his teeth. “You said I wasn’t fucking you good! You said my dick was whack, you dirty bitch! You trying to attack my manhood? You gon’ die today, bitch!” He continued to hiss as he continued to apply more and more pressure.

  At this point, I knew this guy was going to kill me. I knew that in any given second that I was going to die because he had death in his eyes. But something on the inside of me told me to fight. Get this lunatic off you. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed to reach up to his face, and I dug my fingers into his eye sockets.

  “Ahhhhhh! You fucking bitch!” he screamed while I continued to apply more pressure to his eyes.

  I thought his grip on my neck would ease away, but it didn’t. He started choking me even harder. “You fucking bitch! You’re gonna die!” he screeched as I was losing consciousness.

  But then a light came on in my head. Misty, you gotta stay alive. Your family needs you. You can’t let this man kill you. Fight back, girl! You can do it, I said to myself. And with the last bit of energy I had left in my body, I applied more pressure to his eyes until I felt gobs of blood and human tissue between my fingers. And at that moment, Terrell released his grip from my neck. “You fucking bitch!” he screamed once again after he let me go.

  He couldn’t see me because of the condition of his eyes so I jumped up from the floor and tried desperately to find my cell phone that I had dropped on the floor when he had first hit me.

  “Where is my fucking phone?” I mumbled as I knelt on the floor to look under furniture. That wasn’t a good idea because Terrell grabbed me by my hair and snatched me toward him.

  “I’m gonna kill you now, you fucking ho!” he roared and that’s when I realized that this guy wasn’t going to stop until I was dead.

  He grabbed me again, but this time he slammed me against the wall. My back landed against and knocked off a medium-sized canvas painting I hung there when I first moved into my apartment. He and I wrestled back and forth. He was trying to choke the life out of me while I was trying to stand my ground.

  “You fucking bitch! I’m gon’ kill you!” he hissed. It was like he could taste my blood.

  Once again it felt like I was losing consciousness. But my mind was telling me to keep fighting. Come on, Misty, don’t let him kill you. Don’t let him take your life, I said to myself and that’s when one of the nails the canvas painting had been hanging on scraped my shoulder. I don’t know how I did it, but I dragged my back over to the left side of the wall and felt the wall up and down for that nail. Everything seemed like it was going in slow motion. After feeling around the wall a couple more times I finally located the nail, so I grabbed it and wiggled it out of the wall. With a long, utility nail in my hand I lunged my hand toward his face and Terrell screamed on contact.

  “What the fuck?!”

  I kept stabbing. The more I stabbed him the more his grip lessened, so I kept stabbing him. He swung his fists at me a few times, but I dodged them. A few seconds later, he collapsed onto the floor. I stood there in the dark and waited for him to move, but he wouldn’t budge. Then I kicked his feet with mine. He still didn’t move.

  “Terrell, get up,” I said, low enough so no one could hear me but him. Then I kicked his feet again. He didn’t utter one word. And that’s when panic engulfed me. I dropped the nail on the floor and then I rushed over to the light switch on the wall near the front door and flipped it on.

  As soon as the light illuminated the living room, my eyes zoomed in on Terrell’s lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood. The sight of him with his eyeballs gouged out like you’d see in a horror movie made me wonder how I was capable of doing this. I’ve never put my hands on anyone in my entire life. So, what made me do this? And what am I going to tell the cops? I could end up with a fucking murder charge. But wait, he came here to my apartment and put his hands on me first. The cops might not see it that way, though.

  “Oh my God! The fucking cops are going to lock me up for murder and I’ll never see the light of day again. What am I going to do? I can’t go to jail. Who’s gonna bail me out? Or pay for my attorney? I can’t go to prison for the rest of my life.” I started sobbing as I collapsed on my living room floor.

  Then out of the blue, I heard a light knock on my front door. Panic-stricken, I became paralyzed. “Hey, Misty, this is Mrs. Mabel from next door. Are you all right, honey?” I heard her weak little voice from the other side of the door.

  I hesitated because I didn’t know if it would be wise for me to let her know that I was home. But then, it dawned on me that what if I didn’t answer and she decided to call the cops and have them do a welfare check? I couldn’t have that, so I said, “Yes, Mrs. Mabel, I’m fine.”

  “Okay, just checking,” she replied and then I heard her tiptoe away from my front door. I let out a long sigh of relief and then I looked back at the fucking mess I just made for myself.

  29

  PARANOIA AT ITS FINEST

  I sat on the floor of my living room for another thirty minutes trying to process what just happened. It was clear that Terrell was lying dead on my living room floor, but the part I couldn’t come to grips with was how I was going to clean this shit up. Was I supposed to call the cops and let them take a statement and risk getting my freedom taken from me? Fuck no! I couldn’t let that happen. Not today. Not ever!

  I finally got off the floor and dragged myself to the bathroom. I tried to avoid looking at my face when I passed by the bathroom mirror, but I couldn’t. I had to see what a mess I made. “Oh my God!” were the only words I could utter. Seeing all the blood drying on my face, my hair all over my head, and the blue, black, and purple welts and marks on my neck looked horrible. And that’s when it hit me, and a floodgate of tears poured down my face as I examined the condition of my face and neck. I had to wonder what kin
d of man could do this to a woman? Who would hurt a woman to this degree? And for what? Because she doesn’t want to fuck you or be with you? Life is that fucked up for you?

  While I stood there trying to figure out what to do, I decided that if nothing else, I needed to call Jillian and have her come over. She’d help me make the right choice. Thank God she answered on the first ring. “Hello,” she said, sounding groggy.

  “I need you to come over my house right now,” I said with urgency.

  “What’s wrong? Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Jillian, I can’t talk over the phone. So, please come over here right now.”

  “Mind if I bring Edmund? ’Cause I’m at his house.”

  “No, you gotta come alone. And you gotta come now.”

  “Okay. I’m leaving now,” she assured me.

  Seconds after I got off the phone, I stripped down to nothing and hopped into the shower. I knew I needed to at least have myself cleaned up before Jillian got here. So, I showered for at least ten minutes and washed my hair. It seemed like moments after I got out of the shower and slipped on a T-shirt and a pair of boy shorts, my doorbell was ringing. I rushed to the front door and opened it slowly.

  “What are you doing? Open the door,” she said like she was getting agitated.

  “Whatever you do, please don’t scream when you come in here,” I begged her quietly while I continued to pull the door open slowly.

  “Girl, move,” she said, and then she pushed her way by me. She took a total of five steps before she stopped in her tracks and gasped. “Oh my God! What the fuck! Is that Terrell? And is he dead?” she whispered while she tried to process what she was looking at.

  “Yes, he’s dead,” I whispered, waving my hand to get her to lower her voice.

  “What the fuck happened? And why is he dead?” Jillian’s questions kept coming.

  “He came over here and started attacking me because I didn’t want to give his ass any pussy,” I told her.