Notorious

by Kiki Swinson

  I honestly didn’t know what to tell her, so I shrugged my shoulders.

  Her phone rang at least six times until it stopped. And right before we exhaled, it rang again. At this point I couldn’t take it anymore, so I snatched the cell phone out of her hand and answered it.

  “Hello,” I roared through the receiver. But I got no response. So, I yelled hello again.

  This time I got a response. “Is this Yoshi?” the voice asked. It was barely audible.

  My heart fell into the pit of my stomach. “Who is this?” I snapped.

  “It’s Mario,” he replied in a low tone.

  I almost dropped the phone when I heard Mario say his name. I looked for the end button to disconnect the call, but I pressed the speaker phone button instead. “It’s Mario. How do you hang it up?” I whispered as panic filled my heart.

  “Wait! Don’t hang up!” he pleaded. But I didn’t listen to him. Carmen took the phone out of my hand and disconnected the call. When the screen went completely dead, I exhaled a sigh of relief.

  “Come on. We got to get out of here,” I insisted.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” she agreed as she turned her phone off.

  I started the car and headed out of the parking lot of Walmart. I pressed down on the accelerator and hauled ass back to Kimberly’s house. It was around six-thirty in the evening when we returned, so it was kind of dark outside. Kimberly wasn’t home as of yet, so we used the key she left us to get in and out of the house with. Carmen hopped out of the car first.

  I followed right behind her after I reached in the backseat to retrieve my bags. As soon as I closed the driver side door behind me, I turned around to walk toward the front door and got the surprise of my life. I almost fainted when I saw through my peripheral vision the silhouettes of two men walking toward me. I turned to my right and locked my eyes on the one I instantly recognized. My body became numb and I couldn’t open my mouth to scream for help. Carmen had already gone inside the apartment, so I was left to fight off these two goons by myself.

  Mario approached me first while the guy followed closely behind him. I didn’t know what to do.

  “I need to talk to you,” Mario said calmly.

  I don’t know how I did it, but I got up the willpower to scream at the top of my lungs. And within a flash Carmen dashed back outside. Mario rushed toward me. “Hey, calm down. I just want to talk to you.”

  I didn’t respond. I was too frantic. So I just stood there with my hands barricading my face, awaiting the inevitable.

  Meanwhile, Carmen leaped in the air and dove right on Mario’s back. She started pounding on him with both of her fists. “Get away from her and leave her alone!” she screamed.

  Her little punches didn’t penetrate him at all. “I only want to talk to her,” he replied irritably. He and his friend struggled a bit, but they got her off his back. And even after they managed to get her away from Mario, she tried to run up on him again.

  “You are a fucking liar! And what did y’all do with my mother?” she screamed as she raced toward him.

  Mario held his hand out toward Carmen to prevent her from swinging on him again. “Hey, Carmen. Can you calm the fuck down, please? I came here to help y’all.”

  “I don’t want to hear that shit! Tell me what y’all did to my mother! Where is she?”

  “Maceo had her killed.”

  “Oh, my God! I am going to kill y’all!” she screamed, as she rushed to attack Mario again.

  I looked around for help, but it seemed that no one was home.

  “Can you get her, please?” Mario instructed the guy.

  And just like that, the guy grabbed Carmen and lifted her in the air.

  “Put me down!” she screamed.

  “Not until you calm down,” the guy told her. His voice was deep like Barry White. His stature was like Shaq O’Neal, so Carmen couldn’t do shit with him. I wanted to help her but my body was still numb and I honestly could not move. Shit, I didn’t know if he had a gun or not.

  “Yoshi, can you please tell your cousin to calm down? We are not here to hurt y’all. We are actually here to save your lives,” he explained.

  I looked up at Carmen dangling in the air and something told me that I needed to defuse the situation right away, so I opened up my mouth and said, “Carmen, calm down so we can hear what he has to say.”

  “Fuck that! These niggas killed my mama!” she yelled back.

  “Please, Carmen, let’s hear what he has to say,” I begged. At this point, I wanted all the commotion to stop.

  Carmen kicked a little bit more, but when I looked at her one last time, she settled down, so the guy placed her back on her feet. She slumped down to the ground and had the saddest expression as tears poured from her eyes. I wanted to rush to her side but I didn’t want to make any sudden moves. So, I turned toward Mario and asked, “How did you find me?”

  “There’s a GPS tracker installed on the car you’re driving.”

  My mouth fell wide open. “Oh, my God! So you knew where I was the whole time?”

  “Yep. I couldn’t come out here last night because I couldn’t get away from Maceo. He was acting like a madman last night and believe me, I tried everything in my power to prevent him from killing her mother. But he wouldn’t listen to me.”

  “What did he do to her?” Carmen cried out.

  “I’m sorry but I can’t say,” he said, obviously holding back.

  “Tell me! I want to know,” she demanded in another loud scream.

  Mario looked at me for an okay. When I nodded my head and gave him the go-ahead, he looked back at Carmen and said, “He had his boys gag her and tie her up and dump her in a bathtub of acid.”

  Carmen screamed louder. “Oh, my God! They tortured her!”

  I couldn’t stand seeing her in this shape, so I rushed over to her and embraced her. I rubbed her head and told her to let it out. And while I was holding her in my arms, Mario stepped over to where we were and told me that Maceo was looking for me and that he wasn’t going to stop at anything until I was found. He also told me that Maceo knew that I was driving the Honda, so he had people, including a couple of police detectives from the city of Norfolk, on the lookout for me.

  “But why do all of that?” I asked. “I wasn’t gonna rat him out,” I explained.

  “To him that doesn’t matter. His thing is you saw him murder somebody so you’ve got to go. Point blank.”

  I stood there in shock as Mario broke everything down for me. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I came out here to get you so I can take you somewhere safe.”

  “Why go through the trouble? I mean, I’m someone you just met. What would you be getting out of this?”

  “Yoshi, you may not believe this, but I fell in love with you the very first night we spent together. I love being around you and I don’t want to lose that feeling.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you. You are going against your own flesh and blood for me. That’s insane.”

  “Yoshi, it’s true! I love you and I swear I can’t let anything happen to you. Maceo is a nutcase and he has medical records to prove it. See, I’m not down with all that murdering shit! I’ve never been like him. I just want to live a simple life, make my businesses succeed, and stay alive long enough to have a few kids and see them grow up. But it seems like every time I found someone to share my life with, Maceo would always find a way to come between us. It’s like he never wanted me to be happy.”

  “All that sounds sweet,” I said, then asked, “When did Carmen’s mom tell him about me witnessing him murder that guy?”

  “She didn’t tell him.”

  “Well, how did he find out that she knew about it?”

  “She made an anonymous call to the 1-800-LOCK-U-UP hotline from a friend’s house without blocking the number, so that information was passed along to a homicide detective who happens to work for Maceo. When it was time for her to pick up her reward money, the detective sent her s
traight to Maceo.”

  With a look of despair, I dropped my head. “And I thought she purposely went to him and told him.”

  “Nah. She denied knowing anything at first. But when he had her tied up and began to torture her, she told him everything she knew then.”

  Carmen heard every word Mario said. She seemed even more distraught than she did last night. I began to rub her back. “It’s going to be all right,” I told her, even though I had my doubts.

  Mario continued to convince me that he wanted to help me and that he never had intentions of hurting me. He told me Maceo came to him and asked him to call me and tell me to meet him, but Mario told Maceo that he didn’t know where I was because I was mad with him and had turned my phone off. I listened to him very closely and wondered to myself whether or not this guy was being sincere. I wanted to believe him since I’d run out of options and had no other place to run.

  “So, what’s going to happen now?”

  “If you allow me to take you out of here, I will put you somewhere safe until I can iron out all this shit.”

  “Where would you take me?”

  “I was thinking about driving you to Edenton, North Carolina, and putting you in a hotel for a couple of days.”

  “Why there? I mean, I can go back to my place.”

  “That won’t be a good idea because one of the guys who moved your truck works for Maceo, so now Maceo knows where you live.”

  “What are we going to do with Carmen? I can’t leave her.”

  With a sincere look on his face, he said, “I was going to take her with us.”

  “Okay, well, how can we trust you that you won’t take us to Maceo?”

  “I don’t know. All I got is my word. And I truly do love you, Yoshi, so that should be enough.”

  I looked at Mario for at least twenty seconds before I gave him an answer. I tried desperately to follow my mind, but my heart took control. “All right,” I finally said. “We’ll go with you.”

  I grabbed Carmen by the arm and pulled her to her feet. I could tell she was a little apprehensive by her body language and facial expression, but when I whispered in her ear that we were going to be all right over a dozen times, she then told me that she was putting her life in my hands. I hugged her and told her I would be able to handle it.

  Mario let her call Kimberly to let her know that we were leaving and that we would call her after we got settled. Kimberly said okay and told us not to be strangers. Carmen assured her that we wouldn’t.

  Before we left Kimberly’s place, Carmen begged Mario to let her go to her house to check up on Rachael and Grandma Hattie. He was hesitant about it at first, but when she stressed to him the importance of how much her family meant to her, he felt obligated to grant her wish. “I will let you go under one condition,” he said.

  “What is that?” Carmen asked, while she wiped the tears from her face.

  “You got to let my man here drive you there.”

  “Can Yoshi ride with us?” Carmen asked.

  “Yes, I want to ride with her,” I interjected.

  “I swear to you that that will not be a good idea. Maceo has his men on the lookout for you, Yoshi, and if they see you, my man here ain’t gonna be able to fight all them niggas off,” he explained.

  I wasn’t trying to hear what he was saying and my expression showed it. So, he said, “Look, sweetheart, you are going to have to trust me on this. Please just let my man here take Carmen out to Huntersville really quick so they can come back and meet us. The quicker I can get you out of this area, the better off you are.”

  Carmen stepped up and said, “He’s probably right, Yoshi. You probably won’t be safe going back to my house, so go with Mario and I’ll meet up with you later.”

  I hesitated for a second, and then said, “All right.”

  Not too long after Carmen and I agreed to go separate ways, we all departed. I jumped in Mario’s Benz wagon and the guy Mario brought with him drove away the Honda with Carmen in it. Before they pulled off, I hugged her and told her to be careful. I also told her I’d turned my phone back on so she needed to call me as soon as she got there and right before she left. She assured me that she would.

  The Ride of My Life

  I rode in complete silence for the first fifteen minutes of the drive. Mario reiterated a few times about how much he loved me and that he didn’t want to lose me. I listened to him but I really wasn’t moved. My emotions were too tied up in what had happened to Aunt Sandra. I was also thinking about the well-being of Carmen, Rachael, and Grandma Hattie. I would truly be devastated if I lost them, too. It seemed like every time I came in contact with someone I loved, something ended up happening to them.

  I looked at Mario and said, “Do you think Carmen and that guy are going to be all right?”

  “Gene can take care of himself. Believe me, he got the right ammo with him just in case something funny jumps off.”

  “Has your brother threatened to do anything at all to my other relatives?’

  “No, he hasn’t. He just wants you,” Mario told me. His tone was low but what he said was clear to me.

  “Remember last night when you called me and told me that you missed me and that you wanted me to meet you at your house?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you mean that? Or were you trying to set me up?”

  “I meant it. But if I would’ve told you I knew what was going on and that I wanted to help you by saving your life, so meet me somewhere, you wouldn’t have believed me. So, I tried to use reverse psychology even though it didn’t work—you hung up on me anyway.”

  I didn’t respond to his comment. I just turned back around and gazed out the window.

  The drive to our destination probably took us about an hour if not more. It was very peaceful and I had to admit that I was beginning to feel at ease. When we arrived in Edenton, he drove to the downtown area. I could see that it was a small town; every business looked like it was family owned and run. I could probably count the number of businesses that sat across from each other on both of my hands. The town kind of reminded me of the show on TV called Mayberry RFD that only had one sheriff and one deputy. Not too far from the family-owned businesses the town had a Walmart and a Marriott hotel, so we stopped at the Marriott hotel and got us a nice suite. He paid for one whole week and tipped the desk clerk an extra three hundred dollars with specific instructions not to register his real name in their log. She said, “No problem,” and handed him the key cards to his room.

  As soon as we got to the ninth floor, where our suite was located, we rushed into our room and began to unwind. I headed for the shower, while Mario turned on the television. I believe I stayed in the shower for at least twenty minutes, letting the hot water relax me. And once again, I had time to reflect back on my life and where I went wrong. The first thing that popped in my head was how, finally achieving success as an attorney, I let greed come into my life and tear it apart. I did not have to make all those bribes to win my cases. I was smart, so I could have climbed to the top without all the rigamarole of paying off judges and DAs or even fucking them, for that matter. And on top of that, I even resorted to snorting cocaine again. How idiotic was that? I couldn’t take the blinders off to see how I was ruining my fucking life. I remember when Maria told me I needed to slow my life down because I was about to get into a head-on collision. And you know what? She was right. Look at me, hiding out from the Feds, the DEA, Sheldon and his crew, and a fucking local psycho named Maceo. They all wanted a piece of me, and I couldn’t oblige. I just wished that they would leave me alone.

  When I finally decided to soap up, the water got cold, so I did a rush job with the soap and washcloth and then got out of there. Right after I grabbed the towel from the towel rack, I exited the bathroom. When I entered the bedroom where Mario was, he was sitting at the edge of the bed watching television with his back facing me. He didn’t know I was standing behind him, so I looked over his shoulder to see what he wa
s watching.

  My heart dropped when I saw a picture of me plastered on America’s Most Wanted. I wanted so desperately to run, but where was I going to go? I knew then I had to stay where I was and face the music.

  I stood there the entire time listening to the broadcast. The host revealed everything there is to know about me, so I knew I had some explaining to do when Mario turned around and popped the first question. The segment about me didn’t last very long. But it lasted long enough for Mario to find out that I used to be a successful, high-profile attorney. And that I was a millionaire, living in a $5.2 million, split-level penthouse located on Collins Avenue in the heart of Miami, Florida. He also found out that I too had had a team of important officials on my payroll to assist me in winning my cases, until authorities from a different side brought the whole operation down.

  I couldn’t see Mario’s face, but I knew he was tuned in to what he had heard. At one point he shook his head in disbelief. I couldn’t stand it anymore. My heart couldn’t take it, so I walked up to him and said, “I know you’re shocked by what you just heard, but not all of what that man said is true.”

  He turned around and looked at me with the most confused expression he could muster up. I knew he didn’t know what to say, because he wouldn’t open his mouth to comment.

  I took another step and said, “Yes, I lied to you about who I was and where I was from. But I did not kill my best friend or my housekeeper. I was set up.”

  Mario got up from the bed and took two steps backward. “How long were you going to keep this shit away from me?”

  “Mario, I wanted to tell you but I was afraid you would act like you’re acting right now.”

  Again he shook his head in disbelief. “I know now we aren’t going to be able to spend the rest of our lives together.”

  “Don’t talk like that. I did not commit those murders, so I can fight those charges with the right attorney. I just don’t know anyone from Miami who would help.”

  “Why is that?”