The Score

by Kiki Swinson

  “Please don’t,” I said, this time with more force in my voice. Drake still didn’t listen. My protests seemed to spur him on even further. I could feel his tongue probing my labia now. Suddenly Matt’s face flashed on the inside of my eyelids. I shook my head left to right in an attempt to make it go away.

  “Stop!” I yelled at Drake. I used my foot to kick him away. I was fully sobbing now.

  “Ouch!” he growled. He stood up. His expression was crumpled in confusion as he held his face.

  “What the hell, Lauriel?” he said, wiping my juices off of his lips with his hands.

  I sat up and buried my face in my hands. I continued sobbing like I had just found out that a close relative had died. That’s how I felt, too. It was like being away from Matt had opened up a huge chasm in my heart and my life.

  “Shhh. What’s the matter? What happened?” Drake asked, concern lacing his words. He bent down in front of me and tried to pull my hands from my face. “Look at me,” he whispered, tugging on my hands. “C’mon, Lauriel. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me what’s bothering you so much,” Drake pressed.

  “I can’t,” I sobbed. “I’m sorry I did this to you. I just can’t,” I cried.

  “You didn’t do anything to me. But, I want you to talk to me. Look at me,” Drake said softly. After a few minutes, I moved my hands from my face. With sad, pitiful eyes I looked into his gorgeous face.

  “I can’t tell you everything, Drake. There’s just so much. Please don’t take it personal,” I said, my voice rising and falling with each word. “I just can’t share everything right now. Some things take time and are just too painful to relive.”

  “Okay. Okay. You don’t have to tell me right now. We don’t even have to talk. Let’s just sit together in silence. As long as I can be near you I’m fine with that,” he said with a sincerity I had never felt from anyone in my life, including Matt. Drake put his arms around me and just held me for hours. I felt like I had found the man of my dreams. At that moment, nothing could have convinced me of anything different.

  “Where have you been all of my life?” I finally broke the silence.

  “I’ve been around. We just had to find each other,” Drake replied as he stroked my hair. “Sometimes finding who you’re looking for is easier than we might think,” he explained. The words flowed from his mouth so easy. I could tell that they weren’t rehearsed. And that’s what was so authentic about them. One part of me wanted to trust Drake, but the street side of me warned me not to. So the best course of action was for me to wait it out. The real him would reveal his true identity when the time was right.

  MATT

  I knocked on the door of the small Baltimore row house like I had a right to be knocking. At first there was no answer. I kept knocking, each time I banged a little bit harder. I remembered Lauren saying that Ryan never came outside and barely liked to answer his door.

  Finally, I heard locks clicking on the door. The door creaked open a crack and I could see a sliver of Ryan’s pale face.

  “Hello?” he said in a soft voice.

  “Ryan . . . it’s Matt, Lauren’s man. I need to speak to you,” I told him.

  “About what?” he asked. Then I could see him starting to close the door. I lifted my Timberland boot and drove it into the door. The chain that Ryan had left on the door didn’t budge.

  “Open the fucking door or I’ll shoot your ass right through this door,” I warned, flashing my gun. Ryan unchained the door. I pushed my way inside.

  WHAM! I slammed my gun into his head for disrespecting me at the door. I wasn’t in the mood for none of the bullshit. I was there for a reason and I wasn’t leaving until I was satisfied.

  “Aghgh! Please don’t shoot me!” Ryan cried. He held his hand up to his head and when he saw the blood from the long gash that had opened up on his head, he screamed again like a little bitch. Looking at his little frail, skinny ass didn’t put me in the mindset of a skilled computer hacker.

  “Please,” Ryan begged. His white face turned beet red and his long, blond hair hung wildly over his eyes. “I don’t even know what’s going on. Why are you doing this?”

  “I think you do know what’s going on and why the fuck I’m here. Where the fuck did Lauren go?!” I gritted, leveling the barrel of my Glock at Ryan’s head. I’m sure Ryan saw the fire flashing in my eyes. He was trembling like a leaf in a wild storm. “Don’t fucking lie either because I have no problem spilling your brains all over this dirty-ass house of yours,” I warned.

  “I . . . I . . . really don’t know,” he replied shakily.

  Ryan must’ve been one of those reclusive, pack rat, hoarder, genius computer geeks. His house was a fucking mess. I had never seen anything like this in person. I don’t know how this nigga was living up in his nasty-ass place in those conditions. It stank like garbage that had sat out in the sun for ten days, human shit, dirty socks, and cat piss all mixed together.

  I had to kick my way through the piles of takeout containers and fast food wrappers that littered the floors. Flies buzzed throughout the house. Roaches scurried around. I noticed rat droppings in the corners too. The dark brown, suede couch was barely visible amongst the garbage strewn over it. The only thing that looked organized was what I assumed to be Ryan’s work space. There were four long tables set up with about eight computers on them—some laptops and some PCs. Each computer seemed to be in a different stage of work. Next to the computer table there were towers with routers, network drives, and what appeared to be an entire server set up along one wall. Ryan had about ten different cell phones and two landline phones. There were wires everywhere all plugged into socket strip after socket strip. This dude looked like he ate, drank, slept, and shit computers.

  The more he denied knowing anything about Lauren’s disappearance, the more I started feeling like he was trying to insult my intelligence. My jaw rocked feverishly and my free hand curled into a fist on its own.

  “Yo, I’m only going to ask you one more time . . . where the fuck did Lauren go?” I gritted. I pressed the tip of the gun barrel down into his forehead until I saw his skin pucker. My heart was pounding and I could feel my muscles cording against my skin. I could actually see myself blowing this nigga’s head off if he didn’t help me. I was seeing red, which wasn’t a good sign for him.

  “I . . . I . . . swear. I don’t know where she is,” Ryan whimpered. “She came and paid me for helping her crack a bank account. I . . . I . . . had some IDs already made for her in the name of Lauriel Kelton because she said she would need them after the bank stuff was over. That was it. That was all she told me. When I hacked the accounts she had told me she needed the driver’s license, passport, and Social Security card because she would be leaving town. She never said where she was going. All I remember her saying is she was moving up to the big time and that she always loved big cities. All along I assumed that you guys were going away together,” Ryan told me.

  Hearing his words hurt me more than Lauren’s actual abandonment. I had assumed Lauren and I would be leaving town together too. Listening to Ryan now let me know that Lauren had plotted and planned her grimy shit out long before we even entered that bank to get that money.

  Always loved big cities. I repeated silently in my head. That could mean anywhere. Lauren loved New York, but she had also talked about visiting Chicago and Boston, which were both big cities. My mind was racing with a million possibilities now. The more I thought about it, the more tense and on edge I became.

  “Did you give her any phones or anything?” I asked Ryan. I hadn’t removed my gun from Ryan’s head, but I did ease it back a little bit so that it wasn’t pressing into his skin any longer.

  “Um . . . yeah. I programmed and sold her two TracFones,” he told me. “I . . . I have the receipts and the paperwork with the phone numbers somewhere . . . if . . . if I can go find it,” Ryan said with fear underlying his words.

  “Yeah. Get the fuck up and do that. Don’t try no bullshit like
calling the cops or rigging shit or else you die,” I snarled, moving the gun from his head, but keeping it trained on him leveled with his heart.

  Ryan got up slowly, keeping his eyes on me the whole time. He didn’t trust me and I didn’t trust his ass either.

  Ryan moved carefully so that I wouldn’t think he was doing anything suspicious, I guess. Smart man. He kept his hands up until he made it to a small, rickety, metal desk that was situated at the side of the computer tables. He looked at me and nodded at the desk.

  “Go ’head, man. Just hurry the fuck up,” I gave him permission. He eased himself down slowly into a small metal folding chair. He slowly opened the big bottom drawer of the desk. I rushed over and peered inside the drawer to make sure he wasn’t trying to get a gun or knife. I couldn’t see shit but a bunch of papers and a bunch of roaches running out of the drawer.

  “Nasty-ass nigga, damn,” I grumbled under my breath. This dude’s living conditions were fucking deplorable to say the least. I was planning on burning my clothes and my shoes when I left his crib. I ain’t never seen no shit like this in my life. As I stood there stomping roaches and dodging other little nasty rodents, Ryan rifled through stacks and stacks of papers that were just thrown haphazardly in the drawer. Just like the inside of his house, the inside of the desk drawer looked like a complete mess to me. Ryan seemed to know exactly where everything was located though. After a few minutes of shuffling he sat up with a stack of papers in his hands.

  “Here! I found it!” he shouted like he was excited and relieved at the same time. I snatched the papers from him. I examined every single line. I knew that TracFones couldn’t be traced and there were no GPS features in the disposable phones either, which is why hustlers and scammers always swore by them. But since Ryan programmed the phones for her, he had the phone numbers for them so now I could call that bitch Lauren and hear her voice. I’m sure she wouldn’t be expecting to hear from me. I could just picture all of the color draining out of her face when she picked up the line and heard that it was me . . . the nigga she thought she had stiffed and would never hear from in her life again.

  I was going to call her every minute of every day until she got rid of both phones. I planned on letting her know that I was going to find her ass even if it was the last thing I did on earth. I already felt like I was going to be closing in on her real soon.

  “Did she say what she was doing with the money? She couldn’t put that shit in the bank so what was she going to do with all of it?” I asked with the gun pointed back at Ryan’s head. He swiped his long hair out of his face so that I was able to see his icy blue eyes. I would imagine him as a California surfer, not a computer hacker hiding out in the hood of Baltimore.

  “Um . . . um . . . wait, I think I remember her saying something about her old foster mother being in a private nursing suite. Said the lady was the closest thing she ever had to a real mother, but that the lady was old and in need of round the clock care now. She asked me about safes and lockboxes. Maybe she was planning on hiding some of the money there with the old woman . . . you know, locking it up where no one could get into it except her,” Ryan snitched. It didn’t take much to get his ass to talk. I squinted my eyes into dashes. Partly because I was contemplating what he was telling me, but mainly because I was immediately disgusted by this snitching-ass nigga. If Ryan was singing like Billie Holiday to me, I could only imagine what he would do if the police came knocking.

  “A’ight. Anything else you can think of that I should know?” I asked him.

  He shook his head vigorously left to right. Of course he was going to say no. He wanted me out of his house. Little did he know.

  “Where’s the money she paid you?” I asked calmly. I was waiting for this dude to lie. “I know she was giving you three hundred thousand . . . where is it?”

  “I . . . I . . . I don’t keep money here. Um . . . I have a place up in the country that I keep my personal things,” Ryan said, stumbling over his words. This nigga thought I was dumb or some shit.

  I lifted my gun and cracked it down on the bridge of his nose.

  “Ahhhhh!” Ryan hollered. He fell onto the floor writhing in pain.

  “Now. Don’t fucking play with me! I don’t believe you. You gotta have a fucking safe around here! Take me to it or else the next thing you feel won’t be the fucking handle of this gun,” I gritted. I stepped closer to where he lay rocking on his side.

  “I . . . I . . . don’t have the money here! I swear! I’ve told you everything!” he mumbled like it hurt really bad to speak. I felt a rush of heat engulf my body.

  “Yo, you must want to die today. Get the fuck up and show me where your safe is. I’m not fucking asking you, I’m telling you. Lauren told me you have a safe in this bitch,” I growled. Sweat dripped down the sides of my face now. I could feel the large vein at my temple pulsing fiercely against my head. I felt like a monster at that moment. The thin strand of sanity I was holding on to was snapping with each minute that ticked by.

  “Okay, nigga . . . we about to get on the same page,” I snarled.

  BANG!

  “AGGGGGGHHHH!” Ryan let out a bloodcurdling scream as the bullet from my 9mm Glock seared through the skin and muscle of his left thigh.

  “Now, nigga, stop thinking I’m playing with you and tell me where the cash is,” I said through clenched teeth. “Next time I’m aiming for your dome.”

  “Okay. Okay!” Ryan cried. “I’ll tell you,” he gasped. I grabbed the collar of his shirt and hoisted him up from the floor. I was only using one hand because I held my gun in my other hand so Ryan slipped from my grasp and fell back down.

  “Get the fuck up,” I spat. I pulled him up again. I held on to a fistful of his T-shirt and helped him walk. He limped toward his kitchen. I kept the gun on him just in case.

  “Aww, gotdamn!” I gagged as soon as we crossed into the kitchen. I quickly put my forearm over my mouth and nose. The stench coming from the kitchen was unbearable. I swear it smelled like a decomposing corpse. I gagged a few more times. My stomach swirled with nausea. I had to fight against the urge to hurl. The rest of the house was disgusting but it was nothing compared to that fucking kitchen. I couldn’t even see his stove because it was covered in black dirt, grease, and grime. There were dishes with decaying and moldy food on them piled up in the sink almost to the cabinets. There were flies buzzing all over. I had to swipe them away and duck a few times to keep those nasty shit from landing on me.

  “Yo, nigga, you got dead bodies up in this bitch?” I wheezed.

  “No,” he whined.

  “Stop whining like a bitch and hurry the fuck up and open the safe!” I didn’t even want to breathe in the stale air lingering in that kitchen.

  Ryan dragged his injured leg over to the refrigerator. I was looking at him like he was crazy.

  “What the fuck you . . .” I started. My words went tumbling back down my throat when Ryan pulled back the refrigerator door and revealed that the inside was hollowed out and contained a huge safe door. That was the most creative shit I had seen in all my years of hustling and scamming. A refrigerator safe.

  “What the fuck?” I gasped. These white people were something else with their clever inventions. It wasn’t one of these electronic safes that niggas could just blow a hole in the keypad and get to your shit. Nah, this was one of those old, back-in-the-days joints made out of real reinforced steel and had the old combination dial to keep thieves out.

  I rushed over and stuck my gun up against Ryan’s spine just in case he was thinking about trying something funny. “Open it,” I whispered harshly. “And don’t try no funny shit because I will blow a hole in your fucking back so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

  With his hands shaking fiercely, Ryan twisted the knob on the old-fashioned safe in several directions, some left, some right. It didn’t work the first time.

  “Don’t play with me,” I said gruffly with the heat of my breath on the back of his neck. He tried
it again. A few turns to the left. A few turns to the right. CLICK. Finally the sound that made my day. My heartbeat sped up.

  “Open it,” I urged, sticking my gun harder into Ryan’s back. When he pulled back the safe door I couldn’t believe it. My eyes stretched wide and my jaw went slack. This motherfucka Ryan had stacks and stacks of cash in his safe. There had to be more than the three hundred thousand Lauren had paid him in that shit. I can’t tell you what I was feeling standing there. I guess it was a mixture of excitement, fear, anger, and satisfaction all rolled into one. I couldn’t even smell the odors in that kitchen anymore. Nothing else mattered except what was in front of me at that moment.

  “Please . . . just take it but don’t—” Ryan started to say.

  BANG! BANG! Two shots to the dome from my Glock silenced his ass. He folded to his nasty, dirt-covered kitchen floor. Blood splattered on my face and onto the front of my clothes. The metallic scent of the blood was so strong I could taste it in the back of my throat. I was feeling invincible right then. My body was both hot and cold. Finally, my brain sent a message to my body: Get the money and get the fuck out of there!

  I whirled around trying to find something to carry all of that cash in. There was nothing in that disgusting-ass kitchen that I could even try to use. All of the plastic bags that were strewn about had rat shit, roaches, or what looked like human shit in them or on them. I wasn’t touching any of those.

  I stepped over Ryan’s body and raced back into his living room. I frantically spun around in circles trying to find a bag of any kind. That damn house was so junky and cluttered I couldn’t find anything. Finally, I saw a laptop bag behind one of the computers. I raced over and picked it up.

  “Ah.” I quickly dropped it. About six roaches had scurried out of the bag and over my hand when I first picked it up. The bag was covered in rat droppings and cobwebs but it was my only choice. I picked it back up with the tips of my fingers. I raced back to the safe. I started stuffing the stacks of cash from the safe into the laptop bag. When every compartment on the bag was full, I stuffed more cash down my pants, down my shirt, and into my shoes. I had to take as much as I could carry. When everything was full, I looked back into the safe and it still had stacks inside. This crazy dude was fucking rich and living like a fucking bum. I just had to shake my head.