Carl Weber's Kingpins

by Raynesha Pittman

  His head being down was a blessing and a curse because he never saw the vase she threw at him coming.

  “You were talking about marrying me, and now your ass is standing in my face with blood all over you, screaming you’re in love with my best fucking friend?” she screamed.

  “You’re the only one screaming . . .” he started and then stopped. As the word “blood” cycled through his head, he saw the blood she was talking about at the tip of his sock. He grabbed his shirt, and there was blood there too, and on his hands. “Tyger,” he yelled, rushing toward her room.

  “Julio, don’t take another step. Put your hands up and turn around slowly,” Matthew demanded with his work piece pointed at Julio as sirens blared in the background. Temper noticed the blood as she was walking up, but the anger nestled inside of her. It was brewing from the moment Matthew told her what he needed her to do for him.

  “I had a feeling we’d witness weird activity going on in your absence, so I had my friends keep an eye on Julio and Tyger after we left. I got a call that he followed her home after the event and that they’ve been together since. From what I was told, neither vehicle had been moved.”

  “So what are you saying?” Temper asked, folding her arms defensively.

  “I’m saying that they’ve been in that apartment together for almost three days, and neither has left.”

  “That doesn’t mean they’re in there fucking.”

  “I didn’t say they were. That’s your speculation, but they are in there doing something. I want you to call her phone and see if she answers. If she does, see if she tells you Julio is there on her own. If she doesn’t, call Julio and see what you can get out of him.”

  “Fuck that. I live there. Just take me home. If I pop up on their asses, they won’t have time to compose a lie together.”

  “If they are together this long, the lie was already composed. Besides, we need either one of them to lie. It can help the case.”

  “No, I like my plan better. Take me home, because if I find out they are fucking, I’m going upside both of their heads.”

  “Did that work for you with Kei’Lani?’

  The shot was fired, and Temper felt it in her gut. It hadn’t worked with Kei’Lani. Her going upside her head with that golf club fucked up the rest of the girl’s life, and though she would never let the words out of her mouth, it wasn’t worth it. It felt good at the moment, but it hadn’t resolved anything if Kei’Lani still ended up as Khasema’s wife and stepmother to her son. She failed at her attempt at revenge. Seeking it again against the smartest person she had ever met and a highly decorated detective seemed ludicrous the longer she thought about it.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “I didn’t mean to—”

  “Yes, you did. Don’t lie.” She held her hand in his face, stopping him in his tracks and stealing his next words. “Just promise me one thing—don’t lose your badge over any of this. Isabel wanted to retire from the force. You have to let her do that because she still lives in you. I can feel her.”

  “I can always feel her.” He grinned.

  The blood covering Julio should have been the first issue Temper addressed, but seeing him in his boxers and his attempt to hide his location sent her into a jealous rage. Staring at him frozen in his stance by a gun sent a new feeling over her—the feeling of fear. She remembered how aggressive he was with her in his office and the unclear circumstances surrounding Kei’Lani’s death minutes later. She wasn’t sure whose side he was on, yet she knew for sure it wasn’t hers.

  She ran to Tyger’s room with Matthew attempting to stop her as the backup he called walked in. “Noooooooo!”

  Her agony sent chills down the spines of everyone who could hear her scream and recognize it as pain. Tyger’s eyes were wide open and slightly pushed passed the limits of the sockets that housed them. The sclera of her eyes was red, covered in dark burgundy veins. Tyger had been strangled to death. A medical examiner wasn’t needed to announce that as the cause of death, especially with the belt looped around her neck. What was stranger was that both of her wrists had been slit. Her arm hung over the bed, inches from the floor, as blood steadily flowed onto the carpet.

  He was going to make the shit look like a suicide, Temper thought as one of the police officers was a step away from grabbing her to remove her from the crime scene. She pushed past him, and with all the power she could muster, she punched a handcuffed Julio in his mouth.

  “You killed her. You killed Tyger, you dirty pig bitch. I hope her daddy has you gutted before you ever see a judge.”

  She was tackled to the floor before she could get in another word or punch.

  “I didn’t kill her. Temper, you have to believe me. I’d never hurt her,” Julio pleaded. Still foggy, and maybe even high, he was positive that whatever had happened to Tyger didn’t happen at his hands. As the homicide team walked in one by one, they made eye contact with him and lowered their heads. As he was dragged out of the apartment, he pleaded with them.

  “Armstrong, Jackson, come on, fellas. You both know I couldn’t have done this. Rodriquez. . . .” None of them gave him another look as they entered the bloody room.

  Forty-five minutes passed. Outside, the biggest dick sword fight Temper had ever witnessed was taking place as she sat in tears inside of Matthew’s car.

  “If that’s Capone’s dead daughter in that bedroom, this is now a federal case, end of discussion,” a tall, well-built white man no more than 35 announced to the still-building crowd of uniforms.

  Temper had spent the first five minutes outside fuming, ready to kill everyone involved, but since then she’d been grief-stricken over Tyger’s death. She had noticed the full-blown agency battle underway. Thanks to Tyger’s father being anything but an upstanding citizen, the FBI pulled jurisdiction. However, so did the local authorities, so of course, the homicide detectives and Matthew from Las Vegas didn’t have a leg in the fight. That didn’t stop them from joining in on the argument.

  “We have a cold case we reopened, and it ties into all of this. We’d like the Los Angeles Police to hold him until we get approval to transport him to Vegas,” one of the homicide detectives Matthew worked with begged as Interpol flashed their badges, listening in on the commotion. Within minutes, internal affairs pulled up with every media channel you could name on their rear.

  “This is going to turn into a media circus starring us as clowns if we don’t agree soon,” Matthew said, pointing at the uniformed policemen making a perimeter around the scene. It seemed like everyone who lived in the apartment came out when they saw the news vans. “FBI has jurisdiction, so let them take him, but if it’s not too much to ask, can we listen in on the interrogation?”

  “I think we can make that happen,” an agent from the FBI agreed.

  “What about the body?” one of the LAPD homicide detectives asked.

  “Go ahead and let her leave with the coroner. We’ll send for it later, but if anyone comes with questions about it—”

  “We know how the Bureau works. What about the girl?”

  Everyone turned and stared through the windshield at Temper. She hadn’t stopped crying long enough to talk with anyone yet.

  “You guys can have your go with her first, but when you are done, we expect you to transport her to us. Who’s the Vegas detective who arrived on the scene first with her?”

  “I am,” Matthew said, stepping up. “I’ve been working this case with Detective Armstrong for months. I understand that we both need to be interrogated.”

  “Good, then you’ll understand why you and the lady will leave your vehicles here at the crime scene and ride in the back of a squad car until you’re cleared by LAPD, after which you will be transported with the girl over to us. Which squad car is Mr. Torres in?”

  No one answered him, but heads nodded toward a squad car up front. It was suspicious that no one, not one officer or detective, not even internal affairs, thought to question the FBI agen
t’s authenticity. Nor did they bother even to ask a name. When the real FBI pulled up to the scene, they reported their stolen vehicle was found less than two blocks away with the imposter agent shot by at least four different weapons. There was no sign of Julio.

  * * *

  The night was long and ran over into ten daylight hours of the next day before Temper was released. Between the different agencies coming in to question her, the only thing that was agreed upon was that Tyger’s and Isabel’s murders and Kei’Lani’s and Paula’s suicides had to be merged into one big case centered around Temper. There was no choice. Almost everything was tied to Temper, and what wasn’t was tied into Tyger, forcing it to connect back to Temper. The FBI wanted her placed in protective custody because, with Julio missing and now the wedge between feuding brothers, Temper wasn’t safe.

  “If Keith convinced Julio to kill Tyger as an act against you, Tyger’s father won’t only send hit men after his brother, they will be on their way to you, too.”

  They brought in a female FBI agent, thinking it would be best to have a person Temper could relate to explain the dangers. She had a calming voice and seemed very caring, but they never factored in Temper’s past when they asked her to step in.

  “Agent McCoy, you did a beautiful job of playing the woman card, and I’m sure you’re right, but what is it that I’m trying to preserve my life for again? My cop of a fiancé just fucked and killed my best friend because his best friend is serving life because of me. I have no family. After Tyger’s death links to me like all the other shit at the museum, I won’t have a job, and I’m already homeless because there’s no way I’m moving back into that apartment now. What am I supposed to keep going for? Why would anyone in my shoes want to live?”

  The room went quiet as everyone racked their brains to produce a satisfactory answer. From face to face, you could see blanks being drawn, and then Matthew spoke up.

  “About an hour and a half ago, almost two million dollars cleared in your banking account. Isabel made sure that you had a reason to live. Isabel wanted Las Vegas to be a pit stop on your road to a new start. She was killed by people who want you to feel trapped in old circumstances. People who don’t understand that children make mistakes. If you let them win, Isabel would have died in vain. I’m retiring my badge at an old age because I can feel her inside of me. Are you that dead already that you can no longer feel her love?”

  “That sounds good, but there’s no beating Capone. All of you have failed to arrest him, and when you did, he escaped. The only person who ever came close to killing him was his daughter, and where is she? In the morgue. The fake agents who left with Julio are dead, and you don’t know by which brother’s orders because you’ve never been close to either, but I have. I’ve loved Capone’s daughter since we were teenagers looking for a way out of this—and she’s more like her father than your missing information files will ever know—and Keith loved me. I’ve felt what it’s like to have their blood growing in my body, and it doesn’t feel good. Keith may be a well-known Crip with a lot of pull, but he’s no Capone.”

  “What are you saying?” Agent McCoy asked.

  “I’m saying you need more detectives at that crime scene, or you need to be interrogating the detectives who were there. By the way, Matthew, whatever happened to Detective Armstrong? How long has he been helping you put this case together? Wasn’t he first on the scene?”

  “Yeah, what are you saying? He arrived with two others, and he’s been at the scene longer than anyone else. He’s down the hall now.”

  “Then you all should get him, because when I punched Julio, he shot him a look of remorse.”

  “And?” the balding officer from internal affairs asked, speaking up for the first time.

  “And I think he found evidence that might show Julio didn’t do it but needed to report it to his true boss first.” She turned her attention to Matthew. “You told me that you were starting to think that I was the only person who could solve this case. Do you remember telling me that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Do you still feel the same way?”

  He looked around the room and didn’t see one sign of hope, nor was he sure who he could trust. “The same way.”

  “Then listen to me. I know Keith, and he doesn’t have the power they are trying to give him. I think Capone was tipped on what happened to his daughter and said Julio did it. I think that same person found evidence that proved Julio didn’t and called to retract his statement, and out of frustration, Capone sent a peon he could throw away to drive off with Julio, and then his real goons snatched him up to get the truth. I think Julio is alive telling everything he knew and has known from the beginning of all of this.” She fell silent. “Or he was alive long enough to tell it.”

  “That’s a pretty farfetched story, don’t you think? An LAPD detective on Capone’s payroll when rumor has it that he’s hiding in Mexico or South America?” Agent McCoy spoke up, sounding irritated with each word.

  “All that money, high-tech gadgetry, man-hours, and know-how, and y’all don’t know shit. Capone lives in Tacoma, Washington, with the biggest hogs you can find on the face of this earth.” In unison, much of the room stood up in shock. “You can ask the obvious, but I’ve been best friends with his daughter since juvenile hall. I make his Christmas card list every year, and if you think I’m going to repeat all that or give you any more information on Capone, you are wrong. I can’t tell you more than I know, and I’m sure one of you in here is on his payroll, too. Make sure you let him know I’m on a mission to kill every nigga involved in this. That’s my word.”

  Matthew was speechless, and Temper wished she could say the same, because three hours of questioning followed her outburst. The only reason she was released and not forced to accept protective custody was that she vowed to return to Las Vegas under Matthew’s protection.

  When they were in the parking lot and at least 200 feet away from any cars, she tested her luck again. “I need you to swing me by the museum so I can grab a few things out of my office and get my car to follow you back to Vegas.”

  “Isabel said you used to try talking fast thinking it would help you be slicker.”

  “I’m not trying to be slick. All of my clothes are in that apartment, but I have a few sets at work. All of my backup documents are locked in my locker. When I couldn’t trust Tyger anymore, I started filling up guest lockers just in case I had to get away.”

  “I’m talking about the ‘follow you’ part. You’re leaving that car there until all of this is over. I’m your taxi.”

  “That’s fine with me,” she pouted, defeated.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes before closing, the museum staff was piled in the food court, riding out the clock until the end of their shifts. Temper didn’t expect anyone to be in the building when she asked Matthew to wait in the car. Otherwise, she would have felt more comfortable having him as an escort. It hit her that Tyger was dead and couldn’t make phone calls from the afterlife to advise employees that she wouldn’t be there to open the museum to the public. It was her murder that prevented Temper from playing backup and making the phone calls for her.

  “Hey, everyone, I’m sorry no one called to tell you the museum would be closed today. Tyger was . . . wasn’t feeling good today, and I couldn’t get around to making the phone calls myself.”

  “Is she okay?” a voice near the back asked.

  “I won’t lie to you. She’s had better days, and I will leave it at that for now, but I can assure you that there will be no work tomorrow, and all of you will be paid. Go ahead and leave,” she said, mustering up a smile as she headed toward Tyger’s office first.

  Thinking her workplace was empty wasn’t the only reason she wanted to come inside. She wanted to feel and see Tyger one last time. Her office was covered with memories of the two. The cold gust of air blowing in her face like smoke as she got closer to her door was a surprise. Tyger’s office window was missing. It
had been removed without breaking it because there wasn’t a shard of glass in sight. Her walls were empty, and every drawer housed in her desk was stacked neatly on top of it. She checked her office closet and bathroom, and both had received the same treatment. She knew she’d have to notify the police of the break-in because that meant the alarm was disabled, but she knew the job was an act of professionalism, and they wouldn’t find a fingerprint or a strand that could have fallen in the movement. Capone had beat all twelve agencies that named him most wanted. He wouldn’t lose now because of emotions from the loss of his only child. She wondered if her office had received the same cleansing.

  From the look of it, everything was in place except for every picture she owned of her and Tyger. They were gone, and her office had a sterilized look. Capone’s cleaning crew had been there.

  “Psst.” The beckoning sound caused the hair on the back of her neck that didn’t make it into her lazy ponytail to stand at attention. She wasn’t facing the connecting restroom in her office, but in her peripheral vision, she could see a big and tall silhouette summoning her with its limbs. The stranger’s face became more familiar, which made his presence even more uncomfortable.

  “Don’t you work in the cafeteria? What are you doing in my office?” she asked nervously as his smile brought a strange blanket of comfort around her. There was too much going on for her to pretend that it was customary to find an attractive man she could only recall seeing once when she was leaving with Matthew almost a week ago hiding in her restroom.

  He didn’t answer her. He placed his index finger over his mouth and motioned for her to come to him. She looked around her office and down the hallway but couldn’t find a source for him to be hiding from, and then she took two steps near the restroom. She didn’t go in.

  “Who are you hiding from, and why are you hiding in here?”

  “I saw her trying to put these in your desk, and I can’t let you go down for Paula.” The man was holding a medicine bag full of prescription bottles with Tyger’s name on them. “They are covered in Paula’s fingerprints. Tyger used to sell them to her or whatever, but he put a gun to Paula’s head and forced her to take them all. Now she’s about to set it up like it was you. This shit is coming to an end fast, and after you’re out of the picture, I know I’m next.”