by L. Brown
Today was no different. Rita was talking about quitting. Toya was there for her and let her know she had her support no matter what. Once Toya and Rita got their checks, they were on their way. The availability of a check-cashing place inside the store was convenient.
“You all right?” Toya asked.
“Yeah. I’m good, girl.” Rita gave a dismissive wave, but she smiled an embracing smile to let her friend know she was good. Her mood lightened as they left the store.
Both women’s heels clicked against the asphalt. Their hips swayed, letting others know they were more than some lousy department store employees. It was a life they didn’t need, but they had come to love it.
They stood outside the Chrysler while Toya dug in her purse in search of her keys. A dark vehicle with MARTY’S PLUMBING on the side crept through the lanes of the parking lot, making its stop directly behind the Chrysler. The girls were oblivious to the tactic that they were being boxed in the parking spot.
“Y’all coming out?” a voice asked from behind the slightly lowered tinted window.
The van’s occupant used the question to maneuver the van behind the Chrysler, leaving them with no way to back out of their parking spot.
“Yeah, we’re coming out right now,” Toya said, without looking up as she continued to rip through her purse for the keys.
Suddenly, the rear door of the van slid open, and two men with their faces covered jumped from the van’s rear compartment. The dark blue bandannas covering their faces made the men look like violent Crips. They both held guns down by their sides and quickly bum-rushed Toya. They ignored Rita’s presence. It was as if she didn’t even exist.
Instantly, Toya screamed her lungs out of her chest. Rita’s hollers emulated Toya’s. The men ignored their screaming and grabbed Toya desperately to get her into the back of the van.
Toya wasn’t surrendering without a fight. She punched one guy square in the center of his bandanna. She couldn’t care less about the guns they were pointing at her. She knew, if they wanted her dead, she’d be gone by now. Besides, her instinct told her, if she allowed them to get her into the van, she’d be killed anyway. So she fought tooth and nail for the freedom attempting to be taken from her.
She wasn’t alone either. Rita came from the other side of the car and started swinging on one of the dudes from behind. The one Rita griped and punched at ignored her frail hits and took Toya by her waist and lifted her off her feet. Toya’s feet flailed in the air, and one caught the other dude in the chin.
The man stumbled back and grunted before gathering his composure. There was a clanking sound followed by a metallic scraping noise.
Fighting turned into sheer panic as the man dropped his gun. “Help!”
People started gathering around, but no one came to the aid of the women. They simply watched and scrambled on their cell phones, probably calling the police. The girls prayed that someone would help.
“Leave them poor girls alone!” someone shouted, but they weren’t dumb enough to intervene physically.
The man who had gotten kicked in the chin dropped to his hands and knees and looked under the parked 300C where the gun had slid. He winced because the weapon was out of reach. He stood to his full six feet and boiled with rage.
“Let’s get the fuck outta here!” the hidden face demanded from behind the wheel of the van.
The onlookers were growing, so they had to hurry up and get out of dodge.
The attempted kidnapper holding Toya gave up and slammed her forcefully to the ground, creating a loud thumping sound. Then, he turned around and sucker-punched Rita. He was sick of her punching him in the back of his damn head. The blow landed fiercely and made a crunching sound of knuckles against flesh. Rita fell flat on her butt.
“Fuck!” one of the men yelled in frustration as they retreated to the van.
After the rear door was shut, the van skidded in the same spot for several long seconds before the tire gripped the tarmac and screeched out the parking lot.
Toya and Rita laid between two parked cars, exhausted and terrified. Toya scooted her body under the car and grabbed the loaded pistol. She clenched it tight. She was sure, if she had had the gun moments ago, there would be flesh and blood decorating the parking lot.
The observers finally came forward to help and comfort them as whooping sirens grew louder and louder. An elderly man came forward and tried to take the gun out of Toya’s hand.
“Give me the gun, dear,” he said, crouching down by her side.
Reluctantly, Toya released the gun.
The threat was gone, but her quivering wouldn’t stop as her nerves disobeyed her mind, telling her to calm down. She couldn’t believe what had just happened.
“Do you know who those men were?” one of the people standing by asked.
Toya slowly shook her head.
“Who would try to hurt you, honey?” another voice asked.
Toya’s shoulders lifted and dropped with an unsure shrug.
Her body language said she was in complete awe and confusion, but the look in her glimmering, raging eyes told a different story.
The men who tried to grab her were wearing bandannas, so, to the onlookers and overhead cameras, they were unidentifiable. But Toya stared into the eyes of the kidnappers, and, just then, she realized the shit she was stuck in the middle of. She had a good idea who the furious eyes hiding behind the bandannas belonged to.
Reese and Mar. It had to be.
CHAPTER 13
GHOST, REEM, AND SCHEMES spent the last day in Atlantic City chasing Trump’s paper. The money they’d won the previous nights had slowly been drained at the crap table.
Ghost and Reem introduced Shareef to Schemes, and the four of them took time out to get better acquainted before parting ways. They found out Shareef was only in the area for business. They all knew what that meant, but they refrained from questioning the old timer.
Reef now resided in Miami, but he was originally from Philly. He had taken his talents to South Beach. He was modest, but it was obvious he was living the life down there. He invited the crew to come down for a nice vacation, to get away from the hood, and enjoy themselves. They accepted the invitation and promised to keep in touch with him to set things up.
The ride home from Atlantic City was tedious in the afternoon traffic. Ghost drove while the others rested. Reem and Schemes were both out cold. Schemes was in the backseat, lying across the seat in the fetal position. He looked like a little boy on vacation with his parents. He even had his thumb in his mouth. Reem was riding shotgun and was knocked out, too. He was leaning his head against the window and slobber was dripping down, dampening his Polo shirt.
They were in Schemes’s Range Rover, and the heated seats were very relaxing. Biggie’s Life After Death eased through the speakers, mellowing the ride with his vivid storytelling. Ghost turned the music down because, for the third time, he’d heard what sounded like an extra melody syncing with the beat.
He was right. Reem’s phone was ringing off the hook. The soft Ne-Yo ringtone indicated it was Toya blowing him up. Ghost smacked Reem’s shoulder to get him up.
“Yo! Answer your phone, dawg.”
Reem mumbled something unintelligible, and Ghost smacked him again and said, “Man, answer your fucking phone! It’s Toya, yo!”
“Fuck that bitch. I’ll talk to her when we get home,” Reem murmured. Reem must have been enjoying his rest because he would never brush Toya off like that.
Ghost was about to turn the music back up, but the annoying-ass ringtone went off again. This time, he smacked Reem on the cheek and shook him to get up.
“Man, answer your fucking phone or turn that shit off!” Reem slowly came out of his slumped state. He sucked his teeth, wiped the slobber from his chin, and rubbed it on his pants leg.
“Yeah,” he said, answering the phone.
Immediately, Ghost knew something was wrong because Reem sat all the way up in his seat with an attentive loo
k on his face. Ghost couldn’t hear the other side of the conversation, but he didn’t like what he was seeing from Reem’s side.
“Stop crying,” Reem said. “What!” he shouted. “Them niggas did what? Where...where you at?”
The conversation lasted several long minutes. Ghost kept glancing over at Reem, waiting impatiently for him to tell him something. Reem’s concerned look quickly transformed into an angry frown. Ghost’s instincts told him it had something to do with Reese. Things were quiet for too long. He wanted desperately for the whole thing to go away, but it just seemed like this shit would never end.
Ghost’s suspicion was confirmed as soon as Reem hung up the phone.
“They tried to kidnap her, dawg,” he said with tears in the confines of his eyes.
His glare was fixed on the windshield, but he wasn’t looking at anything in front of him. He was painting a picture of Reese burning in hell. He vowed to himself that he was going to kill Reese and whoever else was behind the botched kidnapping.
Ghost was in his zone, too. He remembered the day he hit Reese up, and the gun jammed. He wished he would have died because now he was terrorizing their lives.
Only seconds of silence went by, but it felt like an eternity.
“Wake Schemes up,” Ghost told Reem.
“Look at this fucking nigga!” He looked at Schemes curled up, sucking his finger. “Wake the fuck up, nigga!” he yelled, shaking him.
Schemes woke up angry.
“What the fuck, man!”
“Pussy, while you’re back there sleep, Reese and them just tried to grab Toya!”
“What?” Schemes wasn’t sure he was hearing things right. He blinked his eyes and rubbed them to make sure he was awake.
“Nigga, you heard what the fuck I said!”
“Why the fuck you snapping on me?” Schemes quickly defused the yelling.
They all sat in the car going on and on about how they were going to do Reese dirty. They snapped until they all fell silent. The only thing left to do was to get back to Philly, which couldn’t happen fast enough.
The SUV raced through traffic on the crowded expressway. Ghost whipped the terrain vehicle lane to lane. The tires against the asphalt were the only sound ripping through the car as they sat speechless.
Up ahead, the road was full of red taillights as other cars sat, crammed in a traffic jam. Ghost stopped just before he hit the bumper of another car.
“Fuck!” he snapped, and he slammed on the horn. But nobody moved.
Back in Philly, Reese, Mar, and Reese’s cousin, Terry, were sitting in the house. They were arguing in frustration, and couldn’t believe Toya had fought avoiding capture. Shit had gone sour, and they were salty that they had had to abort the plan.
“I told you we shouldn’t have done that shit in the parking lot like that!” Reese said at Mar.
“Where else were we going to find her, dickhead?” he insulted Reese, but they both knew it was the truth.
“Yo! Call me outta my name again!” Reese pointed his index finger at them.
Frustration had cluttered their thinking, so they were going at each other’s necks. Terry tried to intervene, but they wouldn’t listen. He was sick too because he was riding on the strength of his cousin, but didn’t expect that these niggas couldn’t even grab a bitch.
“Nigga, how the fuck you drop the gun?” Mar asked, taunting Reese.
“The bitch kept swinging her legs and kicked me in the face with those pointy-ass heels, and then she kicked the gun outta my hand,” Reese explained. “Nigga, you had the bitch. Why the fuck you ain’t pull her in the van?”
“Hold up! I know you ain’t trying to blame me for that shit,” Mar retorted.
Before Reese could say anything else, Terry butted in, “Come on, man. Y’all arguing over nothing. We gotta find another way to touch them,” he said, making sense.
“I feel you, but this dickhead—”
Mar’s insult was cut short as Reese jumped from the couch and went trucking for Mar like Damarcus Ware sacking his rival Eli Manning.
The two of them crashed into and crumbled the coffee table in the center of the living room. They wrestled and swung at each other nonstop. After failing to pry them off one another, Terry plopped down on the sofa and smirked. He sat there, watching them tussle. He knew that, eventually, they would get enough, but, first, they needed to relieve their frustration and embarrassment. They needed to take it out on somebody, so why not one another? Terry winced at a sucker punch Reese caught Mar with and just shook his head.
The next day seemed like it took forever to roll around. Once back in Philly, Ghost and his crew spent the remainder of the day and night looking for Reese and Mar. Though Toya thought it was them, she wasn’t positive, but they knew it had to be them. They learned from Toya that there was another person involved, but she said that he had stayed in the van. They had no clue who the dude could have been, but whoever he was, they promised themselves they’d bury him next to the other two.
They combed the hood looking for Reese and his acquaintances. They asked everyone they knew about any possible whereabouts, and, unsurprisingly, no one had any idea where they were laying low at. People in the hood were actually shocked to see Ghost and them in the hood. They knew bloodshed was soon to be poured.
They were all introduced to Rita. Rita was still a little shaken up, not only by the Walmart robbery, but now the attempted abduction of her best friend was adding to the tragic chain of events. What Rita didn’t know was that the men who took the Walmart down had been sitting right next to her for the last couple of days. Toya had kept Rita up under her wing over the last few days to comfort her. Truthfully, Toya needed her friend’s comfort because she was shaken up, as well.
Ghost was on the phone with Shareef, filling him in on everything that had taken place. He needed someone to vent to, and, though he didn’t know Shareef that well, it gave him someone to talk to. He could talk to someone else, but, they were all heated and wouldn’t serve as much help.
Ghost only intended to tell the old head about the kidnapping attempt, but Shareef wanted to know everything, so Ghost explained how everything had transpired from the pistol-whipping of Reese to the attempted abduction of Toya.
Because Shareef was an old-timer, he gave some good advice and suggestions. Ghost had never had a close relationship with his father; therefore, he had never really had much of a male mentor, but, for some reason, Shareef had filled that void since they met.
“Sounds like you have your hands full, young fellow,” Shareef said, a bit concerned.
“Yeah, but we’ll catch up with those dudes sooner or later.” “What if he catches up with you first?” Shareef caught him off guard with the question.
Though the question was real and had some base to it, Ghost didn’t like the sound of it. He felt his temper boiling and rising, ready to erupt at any second.
“What? That pussy can’t touch me! I’m gonna crush that nigga on sight!”
More steam built up inside Ghost when Shareef audaciously laughed at him. He didn’t think shit was funny, yet Shareef obviously did on the other side of the phone.
“What the fuck is funny, man?” he asked, as he started to lose it a little.
Reef sensed the youngin’s temper flaring and said, “Calm down, little man.” Then, he checked him. “I’m on your side here, but let me tell you something. The art of war is ‘don’t start a war,’” Shareef added seriously with all traces of humor erased from his tone.
Ghost took the phone from his ear and looked at it with his face balled up. Who this nigga think he is? he asked himself.
Shareef continued his lecture. “It’s too late for that now though because y’all have a war on y’all hands, so now you have to figure out how to come out on top. Don’t ever underestimate your opponent, especially after they show that they’re willing to go the distance with you. You can be touched, too, Ghost. Never forget that.”
“Man, that pus
sy tried to kidnap my man’s bitch and couldn’t even do that right, so how he going to get at me?” He was heated and not thinking straight. “That was some bitch shit he did!”
“Ha! See, that’s where you are wrong. There’s only one rule to war, and that’s to win.” Shareef dropped a jewel on him. “They’re trying to win, are you?” he asked but wasn’t really looking for an answer.
“Oh, I’ma win all right!”
“Listen, will you? They say a hard head makes a soft ass, and that’s where you’re going to end up—on your ass if you don’t get outta your feelings.”
“Feelings?” Ghost said sarcastically. “I ain’t no emotional nigga!”
“Yeah? Well, let me tell you this. A war is fought with fifty percent heart, twenty-five percent mind, and twenty-five percent ability. Both of you have showed some heart, but you know what they showed that you all haven’t?” he asked, knowing Ghost wouldn’t know the answer.
“What?”
“Mind. They have showed they’re using their heads to get at y’all. While you are bullshitting in AC, they’re trying to snatch Reem’s girl. Now, their ability to execute was a little fucked up,” Shareef said, chuckling before continuing, “but, right now, you’re not using your head. I don’t know about Reem and Schemes, but you are acting off emotions right now, so your judgment is clouded. I can’t believe you right now, but I know, if you don’t pull yourself together, you’re going to get killed.”
He was starting to make a lot of sense to Ghost. The conversation lasted another fifteen minutes before he offered for Ghost to bring his family and friends down to Miami for a minute.
“I don’t know, man. I have a lot on my plate, and I have to put an end to this shit once and for all,” Ghost told him in response to the invitation. “I ain’t running from these niggas.”
“See, there you go again. You’re not using your head. You’re thinking with your heart. We both already know you got heart, but you have to use your head. Come on down and clear your head, and let me think of a way to help you, all right?”