by Kiki Swinson
Revenge came in waves and I knew that. One good hand always washed the other is the saying, but bad hands do the same too.
Right after Dugan dropped the letter on me, I got myself together and headed into the deputy warden’s office, where I had met with him a few days before Dugan’s visit to my cell. I sat down in front of the deputy warden and looked him straight in his beady little eyes. He leaned into his desk as far as his fat gut would allow and, with his eyes trained on me, he grunted.
“What do you have for me, Marshall?” Deputy Warden Skaggs asked me, his tone both serious and concerned all at the same time.
“I have exactly what I told you I would get: her confession,” I said calmly, proudly sitting up straight in the chair.
“And just how did you manage that?” Skaggs asked.
“I told you before, she was always hanging around me, so it wasn’t that hard. Once she came to my cell that morning, all I had to do was provoke her with a few words. It worked like a charm and she started wagging her tongue. The little button wire your internal affairs investigators put on my shirt recorded that bitch admitting to sleeping with Todd and giving him inside information too. So my suspicions and all the prison rumors turned out to be true,” I replied, pushing the balled-up shirt with the small button microphone still attached toward Skaggs. He leaned back in his chair with a serious look on his face like he was lost in thought.
“What’s going to happen to her now?” I asked, breaking up the eerie silence that had settled around us.
“Officer Dugan will be handled. I will not tolerate any dirty COs working in my prisons,” Skaggs replied. He looked me dead in my eyes after he said that. A funny feeling flitted through my stomach, leaving me feeling weird. It was like my sixth sense was telling me Skaggs was flirting with me on some level. I played it off like I didn’t catch the vibe he was sending.
“This was good work you did, Mrs. Marshall,” Skaggs complimented. “Things like this don’t go unrewarded around here. I’ll see to it that the prosecutors know how you’ve helped us here,” Skaggs promised. I cracked a weak smile. Even if it didn’t help my case, at least I would’ve gotten my revenge. I figured out that it was Dugan who had more than likely told Todd about my visit with LaShell. Why else would Todd even think to go after my cousin? Before I left Skaggs’s office I told him about what Todd had said in his letter about leaving the country with my son. I knew Dugan probably knew all of the details. Skaggs assured me that Dugan would be arrested that day and that if she didn’t give up all of the details on Todd, she would be facing some very serious charges.
“He won’t get away, Mrs. Marshall. I think the police are already a few steps ahead of him. He only thinks he was smarter than them . . . Trust me, it was all planned out from the beginning,” Skaggs assured. I couldn’t get any more details out of him and I didn’t need to. I would just wait to hear about it later. I guess you could say from the ultimate heist to the last heist, nobody won.
14
Todd
“Fuck is she at?” I huffed as I looked at the clock on the wall inside of the small airport where I had been waiting for the past hour. Sweat dripped down the sides of my face, my stomach was in knots, and I was pacing. I looked at the clock again, which had become a habit over the past hour.
“It shouldn’t take her this long. I fucking told her dumb ass what time she needed to be here,” I mumbled to myself. Out of frustration I kicked the two bags of money I had at my feet.
“All this shit might be for nothing,” I spoke to myself again. I knew that I didn’t have a lot of time to wait. I was on borrowed time—LaBeckie’s borrowed fucking time at that.
Dugan was supposed to meet up with my cousin Tarsha, grab Little Todd, and meet me at the chartered plane hangar. I probably had one less hour now before LaBeckie would be calling in the fucking cavalry and putting that all-points bulletin on my ass. He was a stupid ass for trusting a career criminal like me, but he was far from stupid altogether. It wouldn’t be hard to tell that I had been bullshitting him.
I had called LaBeckie and told him the meeting with Abe was going down in northern Virginia at a big warehouse three hours away from Virginia Beach. LaBeckie was convinced that he would be seizing thousands of illegal high-tech weapons and putting the head of the entire gun operation behind bars today. LaBeckie had probably already bought himself a plaque for his desk that read “Captain.”
LaBeckie and his entire squad should’ve been heading in the opposite direction from where I was right now. This detour and distraction was supposed to be my head start to get the fuck out of Dodge, but this bitch Dugan was fucking all of it up right now. She was going to be dead weight, I could already tell.
“Shit!” I huffed. I had probably made a mistake including Dugan in this shit. I had felt like it was the least I could do for her instead of just bouncing on her ass. Besides, there was no way I was leaving my son behind just like that. I knew how it was growing up without parents; I wasn’t trying to let my son suffer like that. Nah, he would go with me wherever I went.
I had agreed to take Dugan with me. I figured wherever we settled down at, I would let her have the baby and then I’d break it to her that I didn’t really want to be with her. I would make sure she was financially set and then I would bounce and take both of my kids with me. Women were too much trouble to settle down with. Fuck it, once I got to some exotic island someplace, I would just fuck a bunch of different bitches. I wasn’t wifing nobody ever again.
“Yo, dude, we gotta get out of here,” Carlos, the pilot of the little plane, said as he looked at his watch with concern etched on his face. He shook his head side to side and twisted his mouth.
“We don’t want to get held up by the bad weather that’s coming our way. Those feds don’t play when it comes to aircraft safety,” Carlos said. I shook my head in disgust and pursed my lips. I’m about to bounce on this bitch. Nah, I can’t leave my son like that. Fuck! All kinds of thoughts swirled through my mind until I was really starting to make myself dizzy. I stopped pacing for a minute to think. I inhaled and exhaled a windstorm of breath.
“Yo, can I use your phone?” I asked Carlos. He looked at me suspiciously as if to say Why the fuck don’t you have a cell phone in this day and age? After staring at me for a few uneasy seconds, Carlos reached in his pocket and gave me his cell phone. He wasn’t trying to go too far away from his shit, either. I played it cool when really I felt mad uncomfortable under the heat of his gaze. I didn’t need this dude to start asking me a whole lot of questions so I just acted like it was no big deal. If he found out I was a criminal trying to get him to take me out of the country, I’m sure he would’ve balked at the idea. He seemed like the straitlaced type that would have the cops on his cell phone speed dial and shit. I gave him a weak smile, turned my back a little, and started to dial the number.
Using a cell phone was against my better judgment, since street niggas like me knew the phone was always a fucking bad idea, but I had no choice: I needed to find out what was up with Dugan. I was praying it was something like she was stuck in traffic and nothing more serious than that. I didn’t trust many people, so I also said a little prayer that Dugan’s ass hadn’t turned on me too. My nerves were raggedy with all kinds of thoughts keeping them that way.
I dialed Dugan’s number, and after six rings she finally answered.
“He-Hello,” she stammered. Right away I could tell she sounded different. I shrugged and chalked that up to her seeing a strange number pop up on her phone. First instinct always the best instinct, but I ignored mine once again. Mistake.
“Yo! Laila! Where the fuck you at with my son?” I barked into the phone. She needed to know I was fucking disgusted. “I ain’t got all fucking day sitting here like a lame fucking duck! You know what’s up, so where the fuck are you?”
“I’m . . . I’m . . . on my way, baby,” Dugan said, with that same leery-ass voice she had answered the phone with. I let out a long sigh.
&
nbsp; “I’m really close, just please wait for me. Todd, please . . . don’t leave me,” she said, sounding like she was on the brink of tears. A cold chill shot down my spine at the sound of her voice. I scrunched up my face. Something just didn’t sit right with me.
“Yo, for real, Laila, no fucking around, if you ain’t here in ten minutes I’m out. No ifs, ands, or buts about that shit. A nigga on the next bird flying. You got that?” I snapped and hung up the phone without even giving her the chance to respond.
I looked down at the two bags of money I had with me—the one from Shannon’s stash and the one from Jock’s stash. Another chill went down my spine. Was that a sign? I don’t know but I ignored it again. Every single dollar of that money was blood money and I knew it. Mad people had died behind the ultimate heist and the last heist and I was the one with the bloody money at my feet. Maybe I should’ve known that it would come with the most severe karmic consequences, but when you got tunnel vision you can’t see shit else. And at that moment, all I could see was that I had gotten the last laugh on Shannon, Jock, and LaBeckie.
I had my back turned when I first heard it. A little bit of piss escaped my dick in response to it.
“Police! Police! Don’t move, motherfucker!” I heard the loud commands and immediately recognized the voices. I closed my eyes slowly and held my breath once again. This shit was like déjà vu. Within six minutes of my call to Dugan, the police were rushing at me with guns drawn. All I could come up with at that moment was that that bitch Dugan had betrayed me!
“Marshall! Let me see your fucking hands!” LaBeckie screamed. I turned around slowly and could see his ugly face turning stop-sign red. I laughed but it wasn’t because anything was funny. I laughed because I knew, and LaBeckie should have known too, that I was not planning on ever going back to prison. No matter what. As I stared LaBeckie right in his icy blue eyes, I reached into my waistband with the quickness of a cowboy on the draw at a duel.
“Gun! Gun!” I heard one of the officers scream. “He got a fucking gun!”
I drew my Glock but I didn’t get a chance right away to pull the trigger. Those fucking cops were good with their response time. “Drop it now!” was the last command I heard before it sounded like a bomb had exploded in my ears.
Tat, tat, tat, tat, tat, tat . . . Rapid-fire shots rang out and resounded loudly off the hollow walls of the airplane hangar. I felt my body jerking and dancing as the bullets seared through my skin and made me feel like I had been set afire. Still, I would not drop my weapon.
“Drop the gun!” LaBeckie screeched over the sound of his officer’s gunfire. I could hear something in his voice that resembled concern, but I still wasn’t falling for it. I held onto my gun. It was the only thing I had left.
Although I could feel myself slipping from existence, with great effort, I still managed to slip my finger through the Glock’s trigger guard.
“Drop the fucking gun, Marshall!” LaBeckie screamed again. This time he stepped from behind his cover, giving me a clear shot at him. I guess he thought since we’d played cat and mouse over the years, we had built up a rapport. What LaBeckie didn’t realize is that I would never have a relationship with no pig-ass cop. I would’ve rather die first.
With my eyes halfway open and my body riddled with bullets, I sucked in my last breath and fought to use the last ounce of strength I had. With the tiny bit of energy I had left and with malice in my heart, I lowered the gun in front of me and used my pointer finger to squeeze back on the trigger.
BANG! BANG!
Two shots left the end of the Glock before I was done for good. I never got a chance to see who or what they hit before my body crashed to the floor in a bloodied heap.
Suddenly, I was hovering above the room. I used to always hear people say when you first die you hover above your body and was still conscious of what was going on around you. Well, now I know that to be true. I saw myself down on the cold, gray concrete bleeding profusely. I was lying flat on my face and the deep, burgundy pool of blood under me grew wider and wider each second.
I could see a swarm of officers dressed in black moving frantically around me. From where I hovered they looked like ants scrambling. After watching for a few minutes, I realized they were passing right over me. They weren’t rushing for me or to save me; instead, they were surrounding someone else. I couldn’t see who it was because my view was obscured by the many officers trying to provide aid to the other person. I hoped it was that fucking bitch-ass LaBeckie.
A few of the officers were screaming, “Call the medics! Officer down! Officer down!”
After a few minutes I couldn’t hear anything and I was no longer hovering above the scene. I couldn’t see myself or the officers anymore. A shroud of black came down over me and I knew I was gone from this life. Dead, just like that.
All I could do is hope that my story was told correctly and with all the street props I deserved. I hope the headlines read:
GANGSTER TODD MARSHALL KILL POLICE LIEUTENANT BEFORE BEING TAKEN OUT IN A HAIL OF BULLETS.
15
Shannon
“It is with great sadness we report that Lieutenant Austin LaBeckie, who headed up the gang and gun unit at the Norfolk Police Department, was shot and killed today by career criminal Todd Marshall. A police spokesperson told us that Marshall, who had been released from prison as a confidential informant for LaBeckie, had gone rogue while participating in the highly sensitive and very closely monitored CI program. When police found out Marshall’s whereabouts and confronted him earlier today, Marshall opened fire, hitting LaBeckie. LaBeckie died on his way to the hospital and is being hailed as a hero by his fellow officers. Marshall was also killed, but not before he shot and killed Lieutenant LaBeckie. Police say Marshall, who had been on the streets for about three weeks, was trying to escape the CI program and leave the area. Police say Marshall had help from a corrections officer he had been having a sexual relationship with. That officer is now under arrest for aiding and abetting a criminal and other charges.”
I sat rocking back and forth in front of the TV in the prison day room. My head pounded and my ears rang. At first, I thought maybe I was dreaming again since nightmares had been plaguing me from the time I’d gotten locked up. I blinked a few times and knew that I was really awake and that I had heard the reporter correctly.
Tears rimmed my eyes as I listened to the reporter’s every word. I didn’t know if I was crying for Todd, for Little Todd, for myself, or for the cop that had been killed. It was a mixed bag of emotions that flooded my brain and my heart. I felt partially responsible for what had happened to Todd and the police officer.
The day I turned over the recordings of Dugan admitting to her affair with Todd, internal affairs arrested her on the spot. When they questioned her, she admitted that she had planned to quit the job that day, pick up Little Todd, and meet Todd at the small charter airport near Virginia Beach so that they could leave the country together. Dugan had snitched without any hesitation. She wasn’t as ride-or-die as Todd thought, I guess.
The internal affairs officers who had Dugan in custody had gotten right in touch with LaBeckie and put him on to Todd’s little plan.
LaBeckie and his crew had been heading to northern Virginia to a bogus location Todd had given them. They quickly turned around and headed to the airport where Todd was.
The way I got the story from Deputy Warden Skaggs was that as soon as those cops charged in, Todd had opened fire on them. They say LaBeckie was the hero who jumped in the line of fire to save his other officers. They said Todd was shot over sixty times and even after he was down the officers were still lighting his ass up. I guess when you live by it, you die by it.
As for me, I was given a decrease in my sentence for my work in bringing Dugan down, which also ultimately kept Todd from getting away. I didn’t have any plans about what I would do when I got released, but at least I could say I was alive. None of it was worth it in the end. The ultimate heist, the last
heist, and all of the revenge plots against each other had all failed for me, Todd, Jock, and LaBeckie. I guess in the end God has the final say on who gets the last word.
“You a’ight, sis?” Lady came over and touched my shoulder after she’d watched the news about Todd. She was such a good friend to me. I looked up at her and I could no longer hold it back. Tears poured from my eyes, my shoulders quaked, and I let out a roar of sobs. I didn’t even care that I was in the day room where all of the other inmates could see me having a weak moment. I finally let my guard down and let it all out. There was nothing left to hide behind. Lady stayed with me every minute after that to make sure I didn’t do anything to hurt myself. I was cool, I started to feel better after a few days. Deputy Warden Skaggs even let me plan Todd’s small funeral and see him get buried in the poor man’s graveyard. After all of the riches Todd and I had shared, who would’ve guessed his final resting place would be among the nameless, homeless, and destitute. Such is life, I guess. I couldn’t hope for much more. What did I really have left? Nothing but a little boy that I loved more than life itself.
A week after they let me tend to Todd’s funeral, I was in my bunk and Lady was in hers when our new CO walked into our cell.
“Aye, Marshall, mail,” the CO called out to me. I looked at Lady and Lady looked at me, both of our eyebrows up in arches on our faces. I grabbed the envelope and examined it. There was no return address, just my name and the prison addressed typed like it had been done on a computer.
“Shit, you sure you want to open that?” Lady asked, her eyebrows still arched.
“Can’t be no worse than everything that has already happened. Fuck it,” I said, tearing at the back of the envelope.
Dear Shannon,
I mailed this the day I was scheduled to leave the country so by the time you read this I will probably either be halfway around the world or dead. I definitely won’t be back in that hellhole. I know you thought I was the worst scumbag on the planet when we were together, but I did love you at one time. Even if I fucked with chicks for sport, I never loved them. In fact, you were the only woman I ever loved. With that being said, I wouldn’t leave you completely fucked up in the end. I know that the reason you’re where you are today is all because of me and my shit. So, I used some of your stash and paid Laura Schiffler from Kaufman’s office to be your defense attorney. I also left you a little something at the third stash spot I told you about when we first got together. All you have to do when you get out is go get it. It’s all set up for you. If I’m alive, I have Little Todd with me and he will contact you when he’s old enough to ask about you. If I am dead, use the money and make sure my boy goes to college and never becomes a street nigga like his daddy.