The Black Market

by Kiki Swinson

  “Okay, I heard what you just said, but tell me how a conversation about pussy turns into a dead nigga on your living room floor?”

  “We got into an argument and I told him that his dick was small and that he never fucked me good and he got mad and started choking me. Look at the welts on my neck. He tried to kill me. He was literally taking the breath out of me. So, I started gouging his eyes out and then I stabbed him with a nail I got from the wall,” I explained.

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I called you.” I instantly became panic-stricken again.

  “Think anyone seen him come here? Maybe one of your neighbors?”

  “I’m not sure. But why?”

  “With everything we got going on, we don’t need this distraction right there,” she said, pointing toward Terrell’s body. “If we call the cops right now, they’re gonna want you to go down to the police station. And who knows . . . what you tell them might make them lock you up with no bond. . . .”

  “No bond?!” I gasped.

  “Yeah. When people murder other people, they don’t get bailed out of jail just like that.” She snapped her fingers, startling me with the unnecessary emphasis. “And for the ones that do get bail, they can’t afford it because they be asking for like one and two million dollars. So, like I said, with everything we got lined up, we can’t let this shit throw a monkey wrench in our plans.”

  “So, what are we going to do with him?” I asked her.

  “We’re gonna have to chop his fucking body up and put it in trash bags and take that shit out of here,” Jillian replied nonchalantly.

  I looked at this bitch like she had just lost her fucking mind. “First, that’s disgusting. Second, so you saying that you’re gonna chop his body up? ’Cause I’m not. My stomach ain’t built for that type of shit. I got nausea just by standing here and looking at him.”

  “No, silly! I’m gonna call my homeboy Tedo. He’ll do it,” she said confidently as she pulled her cell phone from her purse.

  “Hold up!” I tried to snatch her cell phone from her hands, but she was too fast for me and spun out of my reach.

  She gave me the side-eye. “Whatcha doing?”

  “Do you trust him to come here and do that shit? What if he calls the cops or blackmails us because of this shit?”

  “Don’t worry about all that. That nigga got plenty of bodies and one more ain’t gonna matter. So relax.”

  “Relax?! How the hell can I relax when I’m standing in my living room next to a nigga I used to be with and now he’s dead? You can’t even make that shit up.”

  “Look, I don’t know what else to tell you. If you don’t want me calling Tedo, then do it yourself because that ain’t my cup of tea.”

  “Are you high?”

  “You damn right I’m high. But I still know what’s going on around me.”

  “I kind of figured that,” I said and then I grabbed her by the arm and escorted her into the kitchen. I couldn’t keep standing there and looking at Terrell. The thoughts in my head started jumbling up in my mind. I couldn’t think straight, so I took a seat at my kitchen table while Jillian sat in the chair next to mine. A few minutes later she had Tedo on the phone. “Hey, Tedo, where you at?” I heard her ask him.

  “Out here in these streets. What’s good?” I heard him say through Jillian’s cell phone. He was extremely loud.

  “Well, check it out. I need you to come to my cousin’s spot asap. We gotta throwaway that we need you to take out, and we ain’t gonna be able to do it by ourselves,” Jillian instructed him.

  “You know how much I charge for that shit, right?”

  “Of course I do, which is why we’re gonna sweeten the pot in a couple of days when we do that other job,” Jillian reminded him.

  “A’ight. I’ll be there within the hour, so text me the address.”

  “I’m on it now,” Jillian said, then she disconnected their call.

  “Are you really gonna text him my address?” I asked. I wasn’t feeling that idea at all.

  “How the fuck is he going to know where to come if I don’t?” she replied sarcastically.

  “Why don’t you call him back and tell him that you’ll meet him somewhere and that’s when you get him to follow you here.”

  “Look, Misty, I’m not doing all of that so stop being fucking paranoid. If you want me to, when he gets here, I’ll get him to delete the text.”

  “All right,” I said.

  30

  I CAN’T BELIEVE MY EYES

  Jillian met Tedo outside after he pulled up in front of my apartment building. He had another woman in tow as Jillian escorted him up to my apartment. “I just briefed him so he knows what to do,” Jillian said as soon as she walked back into my apartment.

  Tedo walked in behind her and the woman with him followed. Tedo and the woman both looked at the condition of Terrell’s body like it didn’t faze them. Tedo did say, “Where is his eyeballs?”

  Jillian chuckled a bit and said, “Somewhere down there.”

  “I know y’all find humor in this, but I don’t. And as soon as y’all can get him out of here, the better.”

  “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, sis, everything is gonna be all right,” the woman with Tedo chimed in.

  “How long will it take y’all to do it?” I asked her and Tedo both.

  “After we get him in a bathtub, it shouldn’t take us longer than forty-five minutes,” he replied.

  “Yeah, that’s about right,” the woman agreed.

  I looked her up and down and saw a heavy-set female gangster with a medium-brown complexion who looked like she wanted to take on the image of a man and had something to prove. She even looked like she could be a female pimp with a stable of run-down-ass prostitutes with drug habits.

  After she put her backpack down on my coffee table, she opened it and pulled a slew of items from it. The first thing I saw was a black body bag. She had the fucking real deal. I’m talking about the ones you see on the TV series NCIS. The next thing she pulled out of the bag was a small electric saw.

  “Hey wait, you’re gonna cut him up in pieces?” I wondered aloud. But it was only loud enough for everyone in the living room to hear me.

  “How the hell else did you think we were going to take him out of here?” Tedo asked me.

  “That saw is going to be really loud. What am I going to tell my neighbors when they start knocking on my walls or the front door this time of the night?” I expressed.

  “This saw doesn’t make the noise like the ones you use to cut down trees. This is some new and improved shit that butchers use,” the woman informed me.

  “Are you sure?” I pressed the issue.

  “Yes, we’re good. No one will hear us,” Tedo chimed in while he suited up with a jumpsuit that looked like a suit that a professional crime scene technician would wear. After the chick pulled all her tools out, she suited up in the same kind of jumpsuit.

  “Come on, let’s put him in the bag,” Tedo instructed her immediately after she was dressed and ready to work.

  Jillian stood there in awe. “Why are you staring at them like that?” I asked her.

  “Because I ain’t ever seen nobody do this shit in person. It’s always been on TV,” she replied while the woman and Tedo picked Terrell’s body up and placed it in the body bag.

  “Will you be cleaning up the blood on the floor and on the walls?” I asked.

  “I got that. That’s what I do,” the chick said.

  “So, what do you want us to do?” My questions continued.

  “I guess you can go and take a seat somewhere. We pretty much got everything else,” Tedo interjected while the woman zipped up the bag.

  Taking Tedo’s and the woman’s direction, Jillian and I tiptoed around the blood on the floor and headed into the kitchen. I sat down in one chair while she sat down in the next. “I can’t believe what the fuck just happened,” I spoke out.

&
nbsp; “I can’t believe it either. I mean, I never in a million years would’ve thought that you’d be capable of killing somebody.”

  “Jillian, you’re acting like I woke up this morning and said, oh, it’s Tuesday, I’m gonna kill somebody today,” I responded sarcastically.

  “I’m not saying it like that. All I’m saying is that, look at you. You’re a small frame woman and Terrell is big as fuck, so how were you able to pull that off? That’s all.”

  “I still don’t get it. Terrell brought that drama bullshit to me. I was in my bed, watching TV and about to go to sleep and then he calls me, talking about letting him in. I told him no and for him to go home. Then he starts yelling through the phone and outside my front door, talking about how I’m a fucking FBI informant. So, tell me how you would’ve handled that situation.”

  “Look, Misty, I’m not saying that this is your fault. All I was saying was that you’re one of those pretty, petite women that doesn’t bother anyone. But look at what could happen if you’re provoked.”

  “Look, I see where you’re trying to go with this. But it all goes back to the fact that I killed that nigga. And because of it, I gotta get someone to come into my house and clean up behind me.”

  “Just be grateful that you ain’t the one that ended up dead. The coroners would be taking your body out of here right now in one of those body bags if you hadn’t fought back the way you did. So, thank God for that and let’s move on from it.”

  “I wish it could be that easy.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know I ain’t gonna be able to sweep his murder under the rug that easy. One of his hos or family members are going to start looking for him and that’s when the cops are going to start their whole investigation.”

  “They can investigate all they want. Tedo and April are the best that ever done it. After they leave here tonight, there’s not gonna be a trace of Terrell.”

  “I don’t care how good they clean up my place, they could still rat me out,” I whispered.

  “Misty, Tedo and his people ain’t into that snitching shit. That’s a code that they live by.” Jillian tried to reassure me, but doubt loomed in the back of my mind. There was nothing Jillian could say that would ease my mind.

  While I sat there in the kitchen, talking with Jillian, I heard the little buzzing sound coming from the bathroom. They were right. It didn’t sound like the industrial-size chain saws. It pretty much sounded like a man’s handheld electric shaver. Boy, what a sigh of relief that was.

  “Did I tell you that the DEA agent wants me to accept the Arab guy’s offer to take me to dinner?” I whispered so that only Jillian could hear me. The last thing I wanted to do was let Tedo and that woman April know the arrangement I had with the DEA.

  “So, what are you going to do?” Jillian whispered back.

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “What are they trying to get out of that dinner date?”

  “They want me to plant two bugs in his car.”

  “Oh no, that’s not a good idea. What if he catches you? Or finds out?”

  “I don’t have the answer to that.”

  “If he finds out about the bug and flips out on you, that could mess up the rest of our plans.”

  “Don’t you think I already know that?” I raised my voice just a tad. She acted like I wasn’t aware of the consequences if I did get caught. Those men that Sanjay and Amir were dealing with were some ruthless people. But what other options did I have? “Jillian, let’s not talk about that anymore. I’m getting more and more upset just by the mere thought of it.”

  Jillian threw her hands in the air. “Okay. I won’t say nothing else about it,” she said nonchalantly.

  She and I sat there at the kitchen in silence for the next few minutes until her cell phone rang. “Hello,” she answered.

  I knew it had to be her lame-ass boyfriend Edmund calling her this time of the night, so I sat there quietly while she talked to the clown. “Oh baby, I’m so sorry. I forgot. But don’t worry, I made it here safely. And I’m sitting here with her now.”

  After hearing the first couple of words uttered from her mouth, I knew she was apologizing to that nigga because she didn’t call him and let him know that she made it to my apartment safely. I say who cares if he wants to know her every move? He’s a fucking joke. He sits around his mother’s house and waits for Jillian’s unemployment check to come in the mail so they can stock up on prescription drugs that will hold him over until he can get the next one. I say throw his ass on a deserted island and leave him there.

  “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna be here,” she told him.

  “Tell ’im I’m in a fucking crisis and that you’ll see his ass tomorrow,” I blurted out. The sight of her trying to appease that nigga was irritating the fuck out of me.

  “She didn’t say anything, that’s the TV,” she lied.

  “Don’t lie to him,” I said louder. I wanted him to hear me so desperately. I mean, will she just take her fucking titty out of his mouth and stop breastfeeding him already? Make that nigga be a man for once in his life. It was bad enough that he lived at home with his mother, rent-free.

  “Okay, I’ll let you know either way,” she said, and then she ended their call.

  “When are you going to leave him? You can do so much better! He is a fucking bum!” I said.

  “He’s not all that bad,” she replied as she laid her cell phone down on the table in front of her.

  “Jillian, he’s unemployed, he lives with his mother, he doesn’t have a car, and he uses prescription drugs that you provide for him. It can’t get no worse than that.”

  “Misty, he really has a good heart. And he’s faithful to me.”

  “He has no choice. He can’t find anyone else that would treat him as good as you do.”

  “You don’t know him like I do. Because if you did, you wouldn’t judge him the way you’re doing now.” Jillian turned her attention toward her cell phone that she had started playing with.

  “Look, I’m sorry,” I started off saying, “I just don’t want you wasting your life away on a man that doesn’t appreciate what he has. I mean, look at all the time I wasted on Terrell. I can imagine where my life would be right now if I had left him the first time we broke up. I’d probably be married with kids. Picture me with a little girl and a little boy. Maybe even a set of twins.”

  “Yeah, I can see you with kids. You’d be a good mother too.”

  “You think so?”

  “Of course. You’re a good daughter and cousin. You’re always making sure everything is good.”

  “I guess I do have motherly ways, huh?” I said, giving Jillian a half smile. Thinking about how my life would’ve been if I had made better choices took me away from what was really going on around me. But it only took a voice from another room to bring me back to reality. “No, hold it like this,” I heard Tedo say from the bathroom.

  “I wonder how far they’ve gotten?” Jillian wondered aloud.

  “I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “I’m gonna go in there and check,” Jillian suggested and then she stood up from the kitchen chair.

  “Be careful,” I told her while I watched her leave the kitchen.

  In a few seconds I heard Jillian say, “Oh my God! I can’t do this.” And she was right back in the kitchen with me. She took a seat and buried her face in her hands.

  “What happened?”

  “I couldn’t stand there and watch them with all the damn blood, with the legs and arms and shit. My stomach couldn’t take it,” she explained after she removed her hands from her face.

  I let out a long sigh. “I hope they’re able to get all that blood and shit up.”

  “Don’t worry, they will,” she assured me.

  31

  BODY PARTS

  It took Tedo and April over an hour to chop up Terrell’s body and place the pieces in the bags. When they were done with it, April g
ot me to fill up a bucket of cold water and hand it to her. She took it and applied some solution to it and then she went in the living room and started cleaning up the blood and whatever tissue remains I pulled from Terrell’s body. It took her another hour to do that.

  While she was doing that, Tedo started loading Terrell’s body parts into his car. I watched him as he shuffled the bags into the back of his car, but at the same time watching my neighbors’ apartments to see if anyone was watching Tedo and wondering what he was doing this time of the night. So far, the coast looked clear.

  Immediately after April wiped everything on the surface clean, she instructed me to get rid of all my paintings and wall décor asap. “The solution I used to clean up your floor and walls made it so the blood won’t show up if a homicide detective came here and used one of those UV lights. But it would show up on everything else, like the stuff you have on the wall.”

  “What about my furniture?”

  “It’s leather, so you’re good. I gave it a good wipe down so I wouldn’t worry about that,” April assured me.

  “All right,” I said while I stood in the middle of the living room floor surveying everything on my walls.

  “What about her hardwood floors?” Jillian chimed in.

  “I tackled that. She’s good. It won’t show up,” April told Jillian. “Oh yeah, you may wanna get rid of all the towels and the shower curtains in your bathroom too, because some of homeboy’s blood may have splattered on em,” she continued after she turned her attention toward me.

  “Ready?” Tedo said as soon as he walked back into the house.

  “Yeah, as soon as I take this jumper off,” she told him.

  “Everything a’ight on y’all end?” Tedo said as he looked at me and Jillian.

  “Yeah, I’m good,” Jillian replied.

  I nodded my head.

  “Everything still good with that job coming up?” Tedo continued.

  “Yeah, everything is good on that end too. I told Misty we were throwing me a bigger cut because of this,” Jillian explained.

  “A’ight good. So, I’ll hit y’all up later,” he said.