Heist

by Kiki Swinson; De’nesha Diamond

  “Yo, man, leave her the fuck out of this. Take the fucking money and get the fuck out!” Jock barked, fighting against the telephone wire binding his hands. Before the words were fully out of his mouth, a gun went slamming into his head, immediately drawing blood and causing a gash over his eye.

  “Ahhh!” Jock screamed out.

  “Now, don’t talk,” Dray said, like he was getting off on the power.

  “So, Ms. Marshall, where is the money?” Dray asked.

  “I don’t have it here,” I lied.

  “Well, you don’t fucking have it in a bank either,” Dray snapped, lifting his gun menacingly.

  “I have it put away,” I said sarcastically. Shit, at this point if he was going to kill me, he was just going to kill me.

  “Okay, well, I’m waiting to hear where that is,” Dray said snidely.

  “I bet you are,” I retorted.

  With that, Dray pointed his gun at Jock and shot him in the leg.

  “AHHHHHH!” Jock let out a screeching, animallike scream, his head falling to his chest as he tried to catch his breath from the pain. Blood was pouring out of Jock’s leg. I started sobbing when I heard Lil Todd start crying upstairs.

  “Please! Let me get my son,” I pleaded with Dray, looking him in the eye to appeal to any mercy he may have.

  “Baby girl, all you got to do is tell us where the money is so we can get the fuck up out of here. See, I don’t have a beef with you. I had the beef with Bobby Knight, so his money belongs to me—you know, payback, restitution,” Dray growled, his eyes looking all fucking crazy. He was a DEA agent, but obviously he wasn’t sticking to no fucking code of honor right now.

  “The money is in a safe in the closet,” I surrendered, because my son was screaming and I was so scared he would open the door and run downstairs and see what was going on. It wasn’t worth it.

  “Go,” Dray said, nodding to his partner. The man left. I heard the silenced gun go off as he shot the fucking lock off the safe. I jumped, hoping he didn’t try to hurt my son.

  “There’s no money in here!” he called out.

  As soon as Dray turned his head to respond to his partner, I heard voices screaming, “POLICE! POLICE! Drop the weapon! Drop the fucking weapon!”

  My jaw dropped when all these cops came trampling up in my apartment. I was really confused as hell now.

  Dray turned toward the cops who were rushing in and raised his gun. Before he could get a shot off, like ten of the cops who were filing in the door let off shots on his ass. I heard Lil Todd crying louder at the top of the steps. All of the screaming and chaos must’ve scared my baby almost half to death.

  “Oh my God! Please don’t shoot my son!” I screamed, closing my eyes as tears flowed out of them like a river. The other guy who had been with Dray came running out when he heard the shots, and the police officers shot him too. The remainder of the cops came rushing in and started barking orders.

  “Call an ambulance! Untie them! Get the kid!”

  I was glad they had an ambulance called for Jock, because he looked like he had lost a lot of blood. The cops finally untied me and started asking me questions. One of the cops who walked over to me I recognized from Norfolk. He was one of the fucking cops who was always after Todd.

  “Ms. Marshall, we followed Jock all the way here, and you’re lucky we did or you’d be dead. Andre Burkett was an undercover DEA agent who was not satisfied that you’d gotten away with the money he felt he was entitled to. When he didn’t get his way, he went AWOL from his team. Luckily, Jock led us to you, and we figured out that Agent Burkett was coming after you,” the cop said. He noticed the look on my face. “I am Sergeant Labeckie from the Norfolk Police Department gang and narcotics unit. Ms. Marshall, you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you….”

  I just stared at him in shock. When Dray’s partner said there was no money in the safe, I knew immediately Jock had turned the tables on me.

  I sat in my jail cell waiting for the count. “Marshall, mail,” the fat female CO who I hated called out. I grabbed the letter from her hand. I had been locked up for weeks with no mail, no commissary money, nothing. I ripped open the letter and read it:

  Dear Shannon,

  I guess the fucking joke was on you. I heard through the grapevine that Jock turned on your ass. I had to laugh. I guess you should’ve been more careful about who you gave your pussy up to. If I had gotten out, you would’ve been sitting pretty right now. Instead, you are being charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery and accessory to murder. You must be kicking the shit out of yourself right now. I hope you rot in jail, you bitch! By the way, the judge put the plea back on the table for me, so with good behavior I will be out in seven. I hope you grow old and fucking die in prison, you grimy bitch. You will always remember the end result of the ultimate heist!

  Love your husband,

  Todd

  I folded the paper, hung my head, and sobbed and sobbed until I was completely dried out of tears. The next day when my lawyer visited me, I told him where he could go to find his fee. He was the same lawyer who had gotten Todd off so many times. A bitch wasn’t that stupid. Money for a rainy day was a must. I had to get out because I definitely had revenge to exact on a few motherfuckers.

  Robyn Banks

  DE’NESHA DIAMOND

  Prologue: The Jackal

  New York. July 2, 1985 … the last job

  The moment night falls in the East Hamptons, me and my dawgs—Rawlo, Mishawn, and Tremaine—load up into our black GMC van and ride out. Rawlo, the wheelman, knows exactly where we’re headed and the safest route, so we’re not to draw any suspicion. In the back, the rest of us are sliding on our black gear so that we can blend effortlessly into the night. We’re old hats at this thing, and we run every job like a well-oiled machine.

  “We’re coming up on it now,” Rawlo says, the usual alert that tells us that we have five minutes until we arrive at our destination. In all honesty, that’s when my adrenaline really kicks in. There’s a certain high niggas in our profession get when the shit is about to go down—a lot of times because it is a huge chess game being played out between us and whatever whack security system our target has set up. I don’t mean to brag, but my reputation speaks for itself. There hasn’t been a security system invented yet that I haven’t been able to hack or maneuver around. Lately, these new computer programs have me longing for the days when all a nigga needed was a good ear on a combination lock safe.

  Maybe I’m just getting too old for this.

  Rawlo turns off the main road, and in less than a minute, we’re parked and the engine is shut off. “Time,” he calls.

  We all look at our watches.

  “Nine-thirteen,” I announce. There’s a series of beeps around me. We have twenty-five minutes.

  Mishawn slides open the side door, and he, Tremaine, and I jump out. Each of us carries our own black tool bag as we hunch over and do a half-mile run up through a wooded area and through a soft security spot on the east side behind the Donovan estate. From here you can hear and smell the ocean, and there’s a cool breeze whipping a few branches against my face, back, and hands. When we get through, we see the Donovans’ sprawling crib sitting high on a hill. It never fails to trip me out just how some of these rich folks live. After studying the blueprint of this place for the past two weeks, I know almost every nook and cranny of this twelve-thousand-square-foot home and wonder what it would be like to provide something like this for my own family.

  Maybe one day.

  Two minutes later, we’re in through the back door, and I go through my handy black bag and disable the code keypad in less than ten seconds. This is simple. The heavy-duty shit is going to be upstairs, closer to where Gary Donovan hides all his most prized possessions.

  “Let’s go. Let’s go,” Tremaine whispers, rolling his hands along after I close up the keypad.

  We hustle up the stairs to the handsome library/study wh
ere we come up against the only variable that we don’t know. Where’s the safe? We spread out, checking under mirrors and picture frames.

  “Are you sure it’s in this room?” Mishawn asks, sounding frustrated.

  “That’s the intel,” I tell him. “Guzman has never been wrong before.”

  Hector Guzman is the big boss man who usually hires me for these high-end jobs. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest that we’ve never met in person. He sends his people—I send mine. Never the two ships shall meet. In this business, the less you know about someone the better off you are. No meetings. No phone calls. He gets word and my money to me through the proper channels, and I get his products to him the same way.

  Now, just because I’ve never met Guzman doesn’t mean that I haven’t heard stories about him. And what I’ve heard loud and clear is that he’s not the man to be fucked with. This Colombian nigga got connections all over the damn place. Violent. Ruthless. And some call him downright medieval when it comes to torturing muthafuckas who try to jack him, which brings the irony of him always hiring me to jack other people.

  A few times when we roll up onto an item that we’re extracting, it occurs to me and a couple of my boys that we could probably make more by keeping the shit to ourselves and doubling our money on the black market. I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t been tempted. But I’m a man of my word, and a man’s word means everything. Even to a thief.

  I step back and survey the room again. What am I missing?

  “We got fifteen minutes,” Tremaine announces.

  I scan the room again, and then my eyes snag on the wall-long bookcase. I cock my head and wonder at the possibility of a hidden compartment. “Start looking for a lever.” The three of us move to the bookcase and start moving books as quick as we can but without throwing them off the shelves. Finally, I pull back on a fake book; there’s a soft thump, and the edge of the bookcase moves forward.

  “Hot damn. We found it,” Mishawn says, sounding relieved.

  “Was there ever any doubt?”

  “Yes,” they both answer, and then chuckle.

  We pull and swing the bookcase forward, and sure enough behind it is probably the largest safe I’ve ever seen in a private residence.

  “Damn. You sure you got enough time to get in that muthafucka?”

  “Watch me.” I rush up to the big iron box and start checking it over for outside wires (there are quite a few) and then take a peek at the kind of lock I’m dealing with (there are more than one of those too). I unzip my bag, crack my knuckles, and get down to work. The wiring is a little tricky only because I think Donovan hired some second-rate electricians who weren’t fit to hook up a VCR. Once I get past that, Mishawn settles down next to me and helps me hook up the electronic password decoder.

  “Who in the hell has a sixteen-digit code?” he asks, shaking his head.

  “A man who’s trying to protect his shit,” I answer.

  “Ten minutes,” Tremaine says. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “Chill the fuck out, man. Don’t you see that he’s working?”

  Tremaine huffs and starts pacing like a caged tiger in a zoo.

  Two minutes later, we get through the first lock with three minutes to go.

  “He’s right. We’re not going to make it,” Mishawn says, looking at his watch.

  “Ye of little faith.” Three minutes later, we are in and staring at the mother lode.

  “Baby, wake up.”

  My six-year-old baby, Robyn, peels her eyes open, and then a groggy smile hooks the corner of her lips.

  “Daddy.”

  “Shh.” I place a finger against my lips to let her know that she needs to keep her voice down so that we don’t wake her mother. That’s the last thing I want to do since I’m not even supposed to be here. I sneak over here whenever I can, but it’s just a secret between me and my little girl. “I brought you something,” I tell her.

  “Really?”

  Immediately Robyn’s bright hazel eyes light up. I have said the magic words. I quickly reach over to my black bag and pull out a brown, fluffy teddy bear. “It’s the same one you told me about at FAO Schwarz.”

  “Ahh, Daddy. You got him,” she says, grabbing the bear and wrapping her small arms around him. “I love him. I love him.”

  “Is he the only one you love?” I lean back with my hands on my hips.

  “Oh, no. Daddy, I love you too.” To prove it, she drops the bear and launches her small body into my arms.

  “Daddy loves you, too, pumpkin.” I squeeze her tight and love how she still smells brand-new, with Ivory soap clinging to her skin. “All right, now. Let’s get you settled into bed.” She quickly scurries back beneath the sheets, and I hand over her precious new teddy bear. “Now, are you going to take good care of him?”

  “Forever and ever,” she promises, beaming up at me. “I think I’m going to name him Fred.”

  “Fred?”

  “Like Fred Flintstone,” she says like the answer is obvious.

  “I’m going to hold you to that,” I tell her, and then lean down and place a quick kiss atop her forehead. Just then, before I can grab my bag, Robyn’s bedroom light clicks on.

  Damn.

  “I see that you’re still breaking and entering into people’s homes.”

  “Mommy, Mommy. Daddy is here,” Robyn exclaims.

  “I can see that,” Sandra says sweetly from the door. “Jonathan, can I see you in the living room for a minute?”

  I exhale a long breath and finally turn to see the love of my life, arms crossed and looking like she’s just two seconds from ripping me a whole new asshole. “Sure. I’ll be right there.” I turn to my sweet Robyn and press another kiss on her face. “I’ll see you later, sweetheart.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise. Now get some sleep.” I grab my bag and then follow her mother’s thick curves into the living room. Just watching her hypnotizing hips switch back and forth has me weighing the odds on making a play to get her into the bedroom. I should have married her when I had the chance.

  I barely have one foot in the room before Sandy turns on me.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “Now, Sandy, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down. I told you not to come around here anymore. You’re not welcome.”

  “Come on, Sandra. She’s my daughter.”

  “Correction: She used to be your daughter. You lost all parental rights when I found out what you do for a living.”

  “What? It’s not like I’m a drug dealer or something.”

  “No. You’re a thief. You rob banks, people, jewelry stores—you name it. I’m not raising a child of mine to think that that bullshit is okay. And you can’t keep breaking into this house to try and see her at all hours of the night.”

  “What are you going to do? Put in a new alarm system?”

  “No. But the next time I catch you in her room, I’m going to call the police.”

  I cock my head at the empty threat. “No, you won’t.”

  She closes her eyes and sucks in a long, patient breath. “Jonathan … one of these days you’re going to get caught.”

  “That’s not going to happen.”

  “Thieves always get caught—especially serial thieves with God complexes. Jesus Christ! Just look at your family history. Your father and grandfather served long bids in prison. I don’t want my daughter—”

  “Our daughter,” I correct her.

  “My daughter,” she spats heatedly. “I can take care of Jordan myself.”

  “Jordan?”

  Sandra thrusts out her chin. “I had her name legally changed when I married George.”

  No shit. Her words are like a kick in the gut. “But Robyn was my grandmother’s name.”

  “Like I said, I don’t want my daughter having anything to do with you or your family. You’re free to go out there and risk your neck if you want to, but I will n
ot have it affect my daughter.”

  “Is there a problem in here?”

  Great. Now we woke up asshole.

  Sandra pulls the belt of her robe tighter as her husband, George Hayes, shuffles into the living room and then wraps an arm around my girl.

  “What the hell is he doing here?”

  “Nothing,” Sandra says, leaning into him. “Jonathan was just leaving.” Our eyes lock. “Weren’t you?”

  My gaze swings back and forth between her angry glare and his desperate attempt to look Johnny Badass. But I know straight off that there is no point in attempting to reason with their united front. “Yeah. Sure, you’re right. I was just leaving.” Gripping my black duffel bag tight, I head toward the front door. Just when my hand lands on the doorknob, my little girl’s voice floats out to me.

  “Bye, Daddy.”

  I turn my head to see her standing in the hallway. “Bye, baby.”

  Chapter One

  Today

  On the west side of Atlanta, I pause outside a closed auto shop for half a beat, check to make sure my team is in position behind me, and then allow my adrenaline to take over when I kick in the side door and shout, “Everyone on the ground! Move it! Move it! Move it!”

  Like a soldier, I hustle into a warehouse with my government-issue Glock, my heart pounding like a jackhammer. My team of DEA agents floods in behind me. A large group of hands goes up in the air. A couple reach out for their weapons on one of the tables loaded down with bricks of cocaine.

  “Don’t even think about it!” I bark with my weapon trained on the Big Poppa look-alike in the center. “Get your ass on the fucking ground!”

  Seeing the never-ending parade of agents spilling into the shop behind me, everyone starts acting like they know English and get their asses down. But like always, there’s one stupid muthafucka hidden somewhere we don’t count on, and a shot is fired off. This one goes whizzing by my head. I jerk my arm upward and squeeze the trigger. At the same time, at least twenty other agents react, and a barrage of bullets turns the brother on the second floor into Swiss cheese. He jerks around a bit before spilling forward and flipping over the railing. The brother hits the concrete floor with a loud bam!