Crazy Summer

by Cole Hart

  “You sure it’s him?”

  Red Bone nodded. “I know it’s him, Summa’, and I don’t wanna miss him this time.”

  A small digital clock sat on the desk. The green illuminated numbers read 1:14 a.m. Summer glanced at it briefly and then looked at her Cartier wristwatch. It was fifteen minutes fast. Her eyes went back to Red Bone.

  “If he came this late, he’s tryna trick.”

  “Damn right, and I’m tryin’ to trick him.”

  Summer thought briefly. She knew Red Bone was thorough in this field. However, she didn’t want any unnecessary heat brought to them, so she knew she had to make careful decisions under circumstances such as this.

  She finally took a deep breath and said, “Listen, this nigga may not be who he says he is. For all I know, he may be the police. Probably the damn feds or something.”

  “Well, let me at least get under him first,” Red Bone said and added, “And if he is, he got to be beneficial to us.”

  Summer shook her head slowly in disgust. In a tiresome tone, she replied, “See if he’ll take you to his crib. Don’t do no hotel or motel room, Red.”

  “I may have to bait him first.”

  “If he’s thirsty enough, he’ll take you home. No home, no go.”

  Red Bone paused briefly. She stared past Summer and then nodded her head slowly. “Okay,” she said while standing up. “Make sure you keep your phone on so I can contact you just in case.”

  Summer stood, also. She walked around her desk and nearly met Red Bone at the door. Their eyes met. “Anything under a quarter million isn’t worth it.”

  Red Bone looked back at Summer before leaving the office. Her nod was insurance, almost like a word of honor.

  Summer took her cell phone from her pocket and punched a number on speed dial. A deep voice picked up on the other end.

  “Hello.”

  “You sound good, my friend. Is everything alright?”

  “Excellent. How can I help you?”

  *****

  Red Bone returned downstairs. The club was dimly lit with specks of light flashing and crawling. She saw the guy she wanted sitting in a booth, still sipping from the bottle of Patron.

  When she got to the booth, he cut his eyes up at her. “Can I help you?” he asked, seeming uninterested.

  “Can I have a seat?”

  A short, petite, chocolate female passed by. His eyes followed her briefly, and then he looked up at Red Bone. “Yeah, it’s all good.”

  She sat down and scooted around until she was directly across from him. She met his eyes, and her tongue exited her mouth briefly to lick her lips. “I’m assuming you lost my number from the last time I saw you.”

  The guy balled his hand up in front of his mouth. He cleared his throat and then covered his mouth with his hand while he spoke. “I was here three days ago lookin’ for you.”

  “Why you covering your mouth?” she asked, looking around questioningly.

  The guy was nearly antisocial, but his hardened face and red veined eyes said something else. “The two cats over there in the corner don’t look too good to me. I believe they’re the feds.”

  Red Bone was just about to turn her head when he reached over and grabbed her chin.

  “Don’t look,” he whispered. “I know you’re smarter than that.”

  And she was, but she had to play the role. Red Bone had top game, and she knew how to appear calm in the presence of a stranger. But, tonight, she allowed her acting skills to come out. She gave him a very cunning look.

  “You never told me where you’re from.”

  His eyes cut to the corner again. He saw one of the guys looking his way. He smiled just to let him know he was aware of the company.

  “Who owns this club?” he asked her.

  “Some guy named Antwan. He’s more like the manager, though.”

  “Let him know I got two grand if he can have security escort them guys out of here.”

  Without hesitating, she stood up and took off upstairs. She knocked on Summer’s door before entering.

  “Come in,” a voice sounded from inside the office.

  Red Bone opened the door and walked in, closing the door behind her. Summer was still sitting at her desk tapping the keys on a laptop.

  She glanced up at Red Bone. “What’s up, girl?”

  “Listen at this,” Red Bone said with enthusiasm and quickly took a seat.

  Chapter 38

  Five minutes later, a tall, elegant, attractive female approached the booth where the guy was sitting.

  While standing over him wearing a short leather dress, she leaned on the table and whispered, “Put your hand under my dress. Make sure you touch my pussy.” That was a command.

  She caught him off guard at first. Then he thought about the “no touching the dancer” rule. With dark anxious eyes, he slid his hand underneath her dress and felt a fat silky piece of meat. He even inserted his finger inside of her vagina. He wouldn’t have ever thought he’d experience something like this. Suddenly, she slapped him across his face.

  “You got me fucked up!” she shouted.

  Then, out of nowhere, two huge security guards who stood well over six feet tall approached the table, and the guy stood up.

  “What’s the problem?” he asked, starting to sweat as his eyes darted from one to the other.

  “Come with us,” one of them said.

  He went without a problem. They took him through a door that had the word Private on the front. Inside the small room was a wooden desk with a chair behind it. The walls were made of wood paneling. One of the security guards pressed a small button located on the edge of the desk, and a third of the wall rose, revealing a hidden door. The stranger stood back with an impressed look on his face. The door opened from the other side, and Bookie stood there dressed in a black turtleneck, black jeans, and a pair of expensive dress shoes. By his appearance and demeanor, he looked like money and wasn’t nothing to be dealt with. He looked the guy up and down.

  “I got it from here,” he told the security guards. Bookie then looked to the guy again. “Give me a name.” It was more of a demand, and he had better answered truthfully.

  He held his hands up. “Look, partna, all I wanna do is get up out of here.”

  “Who you runnin’ from?” Bookie asked.

  He shifted around on his left foot and out of nowhere a handgun appeared in his hand. The guy’s eyes fell to the gun.

  “Bounty hunters lookin’ fo’ me. My aunt stays here in Augusta.”

  Bookie aimed the gun at his stomach. “Where you from?” He never raised his voice. Not one time.

  A knock came from the door. Bookie shifted his eyes toward it and stepped out of the doorway. “Go through there,” he said. “Red will be waitin’ on the other side.”

  He walked through, fading away within seconds. Bookie closed the door and went to the desk. He found the button and pressed it. The wall panel came down, and Bookie sat in the chair behind the desk.

  He placed his gun in his lap and hollered, “Come in!”

  The door opened and two guys entered. They didn’t appear to be bounty hunters. Bookie examined them; they looked more like characters to him.

  “How can I help the two of you?” he asked in a professional tone.

  “The dude Terry Pate jus’ came in here,” the shorter of the two said, with his eyes staring coldly at Bookie.

  “Whatcha lookin’ for him for?”

  “Personal business.”

  Bookie kept a straight face and pulled out a cigarette. “Well, it’s personal about his whereabouts.” He lit it and blew out a thin stream of smoke.

  The taller of the two said, “He sold an associate of ours ten keys of flex cocaine. We were paid to handle business.”

  “And your business consists of getting your money back or is it a price on his head?” Bookie asked these questions even though he didn’t know the guy, but he felt he could get something out of it. Besides, he knew Summer
would approve his behavior.

  “He got thirty thousand on his head. My uncle in Atlanta wants his ass.”

  Bookie smiled a little, his platinum teeth peeping from behind his lips.

  “Is he worth a quarter million to y’all?”

  “Look, playa,” the short guy said, “you’re really startin’ to ask too many damn questions.”

  Bookie pulled his gun from his lap. A red dot danced around on the short guy’s chest as he aimed. “If I shoot you…” he said and then pointed the gun toward the other guy, “…I’ll have to shoot you, too.”

  The cigarette was wagging between his lips, and his eyes were squinted to fight the secondhand smoke. He finally stood and removed the cigarette from his mouth.

  “So, a quarter million?” Bookie asked.

  “We ain’t got it like that, bruh.”

  Bookie looked at his Rolex. He didn’t appear to be agitated nor in any hurry.

  “I got a motto, and I’m sho’ y’all two are familiar with it,” he said, never lowering his gun.

  “And what’s that?” the taller guy asked.

  “Real recognize real, and a killer would never pull his gun if he wasn’t gonna use it.”

  He pumped three bullets in each of them and sat down behind the desk to finish his cigarette. The bodies would lie there on the carpet until the club closed and then be taken out and dumped in the swamp somewhere in South Carolina before the sun came up.

  Inside Summer’s office, Terry Pate and Red Bone were sitting next to one another on a leather sofa that sat in the left corner. Summer had her elbows resting on the desk with the tips of her fingers pressed together. She stared directly at Terry Pate, hoping she could see a gain in him instead of a loss. But, with her, everything was a gain. Nine months ago, Susan had found a rundown motel for sale over on Molly Pond Road. Summer had given her nine hundred thousand cash, and Susan handled the rest. Summer was an entrepreneur as well as a hustler.

  A knock came from the door, and everybody’s head shifted in that direction just as Bookie walked in. He moved across the room and sat down on the edge of Summer’s desk, staring at Terry Pate.

  “The first question I’ma ask you, I want the truth. If you lie to me, you die just like them lying muthafuckas back there.”

  Terry Pate’s eyes widened a little and an incredulous expression cover over his face. “They’re dead?”

  Bookie didn’t nod; he’d already answered that question. Summer and Red Bone didn’t say a word, but they knew the conversation was about to get heated.

  “You sold them niggas ten keys of flex dope, correct?” he asked suspiciously.

  Terry Pate nodded anxiously, but the pressure didn’t make him lose his cool. Bookie stood up, walked around the desk, and leaned over next to Summer to whisper in her ear.

  “I want you to go home and get some rest. Let me take care of this.”

  She looked up at him. She didn’t like when he spoke to her like she was his little sister. As she stood from her seat, he kissed her forehead. Summer was more than beautiful to him. The word extraordinarily would have to be placed in front.

  “I got a lot of work.”

  “Well, you be careful,” she said soothingly and hugged him briefly.

  When Summer left, Red Bone did, too. In the office, Bookie sat behind Summer’s desk, and for the next thirty minutes, he asked Terry Pate more questions than a homicide detective. Terry Pate told Bookie everything, including where he was from, which was Albany, Georgia. However, he’d been in Atlanta for the last thirteen years, and that’s exactly what Bookie needed to hear.

  Chapter 39

  The following day, Summer met with the owner of the construction company that was going to remodel the motel. Basically, the only thing the old Ramada Inn needed was a minor makeover. Maybe new walls inside a few of the rooms. Paint was needed everywhere, and she wanted flat-screen televisions in every room. She’d thought about building an extra floor for master suites, but Susan told her it wouldn’t be a good idea. When she stepped out of her Mercedes Benz SUV, she noticed the front of the building was boarded up. She shook hands with a clean-shaven white guy who looked to be somewhere between his late fifties and early sixties. He was dressed casually, but wore a white hard hat that didn’t have a scratch on it.

  “How’s it going, Miss McKey?”

  She smiled. “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Great,” he replied while unrolling a wide lineless piece of paper over the hood of her SUV. It was a blueprint of how the hotel would look in the next seven months. This was basically the face of the hotel, the exterior, and everything looked perfectly in place. Summer nodded her head slowly, approving without a doubt. She examined the layout again and exchanged a serious look with the owner.

  “In one of these rooms, I’ll need you to build me a wall vault from the ceiling to the floor. I want it hidden, and I don’t want anybody to know about it except you. I know you’ll probably need some help, but once it’s in, I want the room numbers changed. Of course, this is under the table, and I’ll throw in an extra fifty thousand for your time.”

  The guy smiled, and his tanned face blushed. “That wouldn’t be a problem at all, ma’am.”

  They shook hands, and before Summer left, he gave her a tour of the inside of the hotel. She was impressed and told him that she wanted the walls a certain color. New carpet had to be put down, and her main concern was how she wanted the lobby. When she said she wanted a waterfall with palm trees, he told her it would probably cost another two hundred thousand.

  Her response was, “No problem.”

  *****

  On the other side of town, there was a huge warehouse-style garage on Lumpkin Road. The property was private, and there was a huge twelve-foot chain link fence that made sure no outsiders could get in. Inside the garage were several cars and SUV’s. Basically, everything looked brand new. There were three Lincoln Navigators lined up next to one another. Doors were being removed from two of them, and several other guys were busy either painting or stripping the cars. This local chop shop was generating a lot of money, nearly one hundred thousand dollars a week, and that was good money for brothers who knew what they were doing.

  Inside their small office, one of the brothers named Bo sat on a plaid loveseat splitting a blunt and dumping the tobacco in the trashcan. He was the oldest out of the three and basically the brains behind the whole operation. He moistened the leaf with his mouth and filled it with two lime green buds of exotic marijuana. He wrapped it quickly, but before he could fire it up, his cell phone rang, playing a song from T.I.’s album. Bo picked it up from the table and pressed the send button.

  “Yeah,” he said. He heard loud music bumping in the background.

  “Whazzup, nigga? Dis Big Freaky. Boy, I jus’ got somethin’ you been lookin’ fo’.”

  Bo’s facial expression didn’t change. He knew Big Freaky was heavy into carjacking, but he would always bring in some bullshit. Bo lit his blunt and took a light puff. He knew the dro was potent and didn’t feel like coughing.

  Exhaling, he responded, “I’m at the spot. Jus’ come see me.”

  “Bet that, dawg. I’m on the way.”

  *****

  When the ambulance arrived at the emergency section of MCG Hospital, the rear doors were popped open and Summer was rushed inside on the gurney with two male medics by her side. There was an oxygen mask pressed against her face. Her breathing was labored, and she was losing a lot of blood considering she’d been shot once in the chest and once in the shoulder. The jacking of her SUV was of little concern to her. While being rolled down the long corridor and into surgery, she saw her life flashing before her eyes. Her heart raced rapidly; she was scared for sure. Nothing like this was supposed to have happened to her.

  Now surrounded by a slew of doctors and nurses running in and out, Summer took another deep breath before she drifted into a sedated deep sleep. Two surgeons began working on her immediately.

  �
�The slug is two inches from her heart,” one surgeon informed his medical team.

  Summer’s clothes had been cut off of her and her breasts were exposed.

  “Very careful,” a nurse said sympathetically.

  Chapter 40

  It was nearly seven o’clock. Standing at the huge kitchen island, Mrs. Diane had cooked an enormous meal. The chicken breast had been cooked in a huge cast iron frying pan, smothered and covered in homemade duck sauce. Her fried yellow rice was from scratch, and the greens, which were now done, had been soaking since yesterday.

  Alisa walked in dressed in Baby Phat from head to toe. A smile spread across her face when she saw her grandmother cooking. Alisa looked over at the stove. The aroma smelled so good she had to close her eyes.

  Downstairs, the twins had their own private room with a universal weight set and dead weights. They both weighed about two hundred and twenty-five pounds apiece; they were muscular, strong, and wore their hair in dreadlocks. “Ambitionz Az a Ridah” by 2Pac vibrated from the huge speakers. Jermaine stood behind the bench while his brother positioned himself underneath the bar that was holding two hundred and ten pounds. Jeremy grabbed the bar, with 2Pac geeking him up as he lay flat on his back. He removed the bar with no problem, brought it down to his chest, and lifted it with no hesitation. He completed seven reps, and then his brother got down and did the same. An hour passed, and they’d both worked up an enormous sweat. After leaving their weight room, they entered the garage through a side door, where Lil’ Danté was working fiercely on a speed bag. His hands were quick as lighting.

  A horn blew outside the garage door. Jermaine hit the switch on the wall, and the door slowly rose. Bookie stepped down from a black 2004 Suburban. He was dressed in black jeans, a black shirt, and black Gucci shoes. The twins had got close to him; he’d grown on them, and they looked up to him like an uncle. He had a grim look on his face as he walked toward them. The engine from the Suburban roared while idling, and there were two more guys inside waiting patiently. Bookie exchanged a few brief words with the boys. Inside the kitchen, he met with Summer’s mother. They exchanged hellos, and then he broke the news to her.