by Kiki Swinson
“I think you should come out here with me, just in case that nigga got a burner on him.”
“Yeah, he’s right, Walt. Tony might have a gun,” I said.
Walt thought for a second and then said, “I’ma send Jeff out there just in case shit gets ugly.”
“A’ight.”
Walt hung up.
“How you want me to be positioned?” Jeff asked.
“Both of y’all need to lean over like y’all are working on something underneath the hood, so when homeboy show up, y’all can catch him off guard and ambush him.”
“A’ight, I can do that. But why don’t we pull this van up beside it and act like we giving that car a jump? Remember, homegirl told that nigga that her car needed a jump.”
Walt nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Let’s do that.”
Jeff pressed down on the accelerator and drove the van right up to Shannon’s car, but before he could get out of the driver’s seat, a car with bright headlights rolled up behind us.
I immediately turned around. My heart skipped a beat when I realized it was Tony driving toward us. “It’s him.”
Walt and Jeff both tried to use their side mirrors to see the car behind us.
“Is he alone?” Walt asked.
“Yes, he’s alone,” I said quickly.
“All right, Jeff, we gon’ have to do this real easy,” Walt said slowly as he continued to look in his side mirror.
“Whatcha want me to do?” Jeff asked.
“Has he gotten out of the car yet?” Walt asked, sounding worried.
“Nah, not yet,” I told him.
“What is he doing?”
“I can’t see because he still got on his headlights,” I replied.
After a minute I said, “Wait, I see him moving in the front seat like he’s looking for something.” I turned my head and looked through the front windshield to see what Griff was doing, but I couldn’t see him at all. I figured he was staying out of sight, so he wouldn’t blow his cover.
Finally Tony got out of the car. I looked directly at his hands to see if he was carrying a weapon of some kind, but he wasn’t. I alerted Walt to what I saw. Both Jeff and Walt sat in the front seat while Tony approached us.
We were parked directly beside Shannon’s car, and there wasn’t much room to walk between the car and the van, so Tony walked on the left side of Shannon’s car.
Jeff looked at Walt. “You think we should get out now?”
“Yeah, come on.”
By the time Jeff and Walt opened their door, Tony had gotten around to the front of Shannon’s car.
“Who are you? And where is Shannon?” Tony asked.
I couldn’t see what was going on because Griff had the hood open, but I could hear them. When Jeff and Walt got out of the van, I saw Jeff run around the left side of Shannon’s car while Walt came around at another angle. They both had their guns drawn, so they were ready for whatever came next.
Tony yelled, “What the fuck!”
Then I heard some struggling. My first reaction was to jump out and see what was going on, but I decided against that, because I didn’t want to be hit by a random bullet. My heart was pumping like crazy, and my curiosity was getting the best of me.
A minute later I saw Tony walking toward the van, Walt and Jeff following behind him. When Walt opened the van door for Tony to get inside, and Tony saw me sitting in the back of the van, he looked like he was seeing a ghost. When niggas got caught in the wrong, they always looked like they’d seen a ghost.
I shook my head at that clown. “You weren’t expecting to see me, huh?”
Walt hit Tony in the back of the head with the butt of his pistol, and Tony went out like a light. He stuffed his gun inside the waist of his jeans and asked Jeff to help him put Tony inside the van.
“Griff, can you straighten out the plastic on the floor?” Walt asked. Griff jumped inside the van and turned around the plastic.
“Hurry, before somebody comes up,” Walt said.
We were in the parking lot of a popular nightclub, and even though it wasn’t open, we were near a very busy street, so someone was bound to drive by any second. With that in mind, I turned around in my seat and stared out the back window to make sure no one was coming.
After Griff straightened the plastic on the floor of the van, he climbed to the front of the van and waited for Jeff and Walt to lay Tony on top of it. Then Walt tied together Tony’s wrists and legs.
“Whatcha want to do with the car?” Griff asked.
“Just close the hood, lock the door, and leave it there,” Walt said. “A tow truck will snatch it up after midnight, since the club ain’t open.”
Once Griff was done following Walt’s instructions, he got back in the van.
“Where we going now?” Jeff asked.
“Let’s head back to Huntersville so this nigga can show us where those other motherfuckers are,” Walt said.
“A’ight.”
The Next Step
I sat in the backseat of the van in total amazement. I couldn’t believe I had gotten myself caught up in kidnapping and murder. This wasn’t how I wanted to live my life. All I ever wanted was a simple life. I never asked for much, and I’d never had it in me to hurt people. That wasn’t how I was raised. So why was I always getting the fucked-up end of the stick? The only reason I came back to Virginia was to attend my cousin’s funeral and pay my respects, but somehow I’d gotten more than I bargained for. Once my uncle had me kidnapped, I couldn’t let it go and just return back to Anguilla. I had to have my revenge.
I looked at Tony while he lay on the floor and wondered what Walt had in store for him. Deep down in my heart I wanted that bastard to pay for all the pain and agony I’d gone through because of him, and it didn’t matter what method Walt used to terminate him. All that I asked was that I got a chance to ask him one question before he took his last breath.
Ten minutes into the drive back to Norfolk, Tony started regaining consciousness. Walt sat in the seat above where he lay on the floor. He moved his head from side to side, and then he wiggled his body a little, once he realized he’d been tied up. It was hard to get a good look at him while the interior light was off in the van.
“Owww! Shit! My damn head hurts like a motherfucker!”
Walt leaned forward. He looked like he was about to get down on his knees, but he didn’t. He was close enough to Tony’s face so Tony could see who he was. “You lucky we ain’t killed you.”
I was sure Tony was still seeing red and blue stars, because he kept blinking his eyes while he tried to focus in on Walt.
“Come on, man,” Tony said. “I got three grand in my front right pocket. I’ll give it to you if you let me go.”
Walt and Griff both burst into laughter.
“That was a nice offer, homeboy, but we already confiscated that.” Walt waved the roll of fifty-dollar bills in his face.
“A’ight, man. Well, can you let me go, please?”
“Not until you tell me where we can find the motherfuckers who tortured Kira,” Walt said.
“If I tell you where they at, you promise you’ll let me go?”
Walt turned around and winked his eye at me, and then he turned back around toward Tony. “You got my word, so start talking.”
Tony lifted his head from the floor as far as he could, so he could look directly at Walt. “Who you trying to find first?”
“It doesn’t matter, homeboy, just as long as you help us locate every last one of them.”
“A’ight, well, Dré is probably at his crib, and Breon is at the crib too.”
“I wanna know where Kasey is at?” My mouth was dry, but it felt like I could taste revenge.
Tony’s eyes focused over Walt’s shoulders and landed directly on me. “I don’t know where Kasey lives, but I know where she hangs out at.”
I tapped Walt on his shoulder. “Let’s get her first.”
Walt smiled at me. “I gotcha covered, baby
girl.”
While Jeff followed the directions from Tony, I sat back and wondered how I would react when I got my chance with that Kasey bitch. A whole lot of torturing methods crossed my mind, but I knew I didn’t have the stomach to go through with them. I figured I’d be satisfied to just bring her to tears.
When we arrived back in Huntersville, Walt and Jeff dragged Tony from the floor and sat him up on the seat in front of me. They did this, so he could guide them along the streets of Huntersville. He instructed them to drive down Johnson Road first.
“Drive slowly,” Tony said, “’cause Kasey be hanging outside in front of her girl’s crib, which is that brick duplex right there on the left.”
Everyone in the van, including me, sat straight up to see if we saw Kasey standing outside. There were a couple of people standing at the curb, but they were all men. Jeff kept driving.
“She might be in the house,” I said.
“Yeah, she might be inside the house,” Tony repeated.
“It’s too risky,” Walt responded.“We can’t take the chance of fucking with her while there’s a crowd outside. We got too many witnesses.”
“Yeah, he’s right,” Jeff said. “We got too many bodies hanging around. Let’s go at this thing another way.”
“Wait. There she goes,” I blurted out when I saw her coming outside from the downstairs apartment.
Walt and Tony both turned to look out the side window as Jeff stepped on the brakes.
“Where she at?” Walt asked me.
“She’s right there walking up to that guy on the bike,” I said. Kasey had changed clothes from earlier. Now she was wearing a green-and-yellow Oakland A’s jacket with a pair of dark jeans and a dark-colored ball cap turned backward. If I hadn’t seen her before, I would’ve sworn she was one of the boys hanging out on the block.
Jeff pulled the van over to the right side of the street. He didn’t bother shutting off the ignition or the headlights, so I assumed we stuck out like a sore thumb.
Walt must’ve figured out the same thing, because he made mention of it. “Kill the headlights.”
“Nah, we need to go around the corner and come back,” Griff suggested.
“No, we can’t take that chance,” I said. “She might be gone by the time we circle the block.”
Griff turned around and looked at Walt. “Wanna get out right here while Jeff circles the block?”
Walt looked at Griff, and then he looked at me. “If I give you a burner, do you think you’d be able to hold this motherfucker until we get back in the van?”
I thought for a second, and then I looked at Tony. His wrists and ankles were tied up, so there was no way in hell he could get away, even if I didn’t have a gun pointed directly at him. “Whatcha think he’s going to do while he’s tied up like this?” I asked.
“He ain’t gon’ be able to do shit! I just thought it would be proper for you to hold your own shit, just in case,” Walt said.
“Well, in that case,” I said, and then I extended my hand toward him. He handed me a Ruger revolver. The motherfucker was heavy, but I managed to hold it without looking like I was inexperienced.
Right after Walt and Griff hopped out of the van, Jeff pulled off very slowly. I watched Walt and Griff as they walked away from the van, but I also used my peripheral vision to watch Tony. I wanted to be fully aware of my surroundings, just in case he tried to do some funny shit.
Two minutes into the drive, Tony got up the courage to open his mouth. It didn’t matter to him that Jeff was in the van with us, because he knew that his life was on the line. I was utterly disgusted that he even had to breathe the same air I was breathing, but I left well enough alone, and allowed him to get his few seconds of fame.
“Kira, I know I was fucked-up for setting you up earlier. And I know I can’t turn the clock back either, but if you give me a chance to redeem myself, I will.”
I gritted my teeth before I uttered one word to this asshole. He wanted to redeem himself after he’d put my ass on the chopping block. He had no love for my ass earlier when he traded me off to four goons for some small cash. I had every right to put a bullet in his head right then, but I didn’t. I couldn’t wait to give him the same treatment I’d suffered.
I sucked my teeth. “Tony, spare me all the bullshit! You know damn well you don’t give a fuck about me. You cared nothing about me when Rhonda and I were friends, and you couldn’t care less about me now, so cut it out.”
“No, Kira, you got it all wrong. I didn’t want to set you up for real, but I was broke and I was about to get put out of my apartment. Your uncle came to me with the plan to snatch you up and put you in an abandoned house so he could get you to tell him the real story behind his daughter’s murder. He called me right before he left to go to Houston to identify Nikki’s body. And you wanna know something else? I didn’t tell him yes until after he called me while he was there and told me that he had seen you.”
“You think that makes it better?” I snapped. “You handed me over to some motherfuckers that wanted to kill me! And if I didn’t escape, I would probably be dead now, so don’t feed me that bullshit!”
“Kira, I swear I wanted to turn back around and help you after I saw Kasey knock you out. That whole shit kept playing in my mind the whole time after I walked out of that house.”
“Yeah, what the fuck ever! Tell me anything. Because if it was bothering you that much, you would’ve come back for me.”
“Yo, Kira, I swear if I could have, I would have. Breon and Dré weren’t gonna let me walk back up in there and get you after I made the trade-off. They would’ve probably tried to kill me if I stepped back in there talking about I was taking you back out of there.”
“Look, Tony, leave it alone. What’s done is done. You already fucked up with me, so I ain’t got nothing else to say.”
Tony frowned. He looked like his whole world had just fallen apart around him. “You gon’ let them kill me?” he asked.
I hesitated before I answered. I badly wanted to tell him that his ass was as good as gone as soon as he got my uncle on the phone and convinced him to meet us somewhere. But I didn’t feel like it was my place to tell him what his fate would be. Walt was in charge of this mission, so he should be the one to tell him. And, besides, I wasn’t in a position to pull the blinders off Tony anyway. As long as he believed that we weren’t going to harm one hair on his head if he helped us, then he’d be a willing participant in helping us find Dré, Breon, and Uncle Lanier. “Look, Tony, all you need to worry about is helping us find everybody, and you gon’ be a’ight.”
I had always been good at lying. So when Tony asked me if his life would be spared, it took little effort for me to tell him what he wanted to hear.
From the time I’d started dating my late husband, up until the time we got married, I was taught how to lie. He didn’t know it, but he embedded that in me. He lied to me on so many occasions, the shit started rubbing off on me. And the way things looked, I was only gonna get better and better at it.
By the time Jeff rode around the block and made it back to the same spot where Griff and Walt had gotten out of van, the streets looked empty. There was no one in sight. Griff and Walt were nowhere to be found.
“What the fuck just happened?” I asked, directing my question to Jeff.
“Shit! That’s a good question. But I don’t know what to tell you.” He continued to drive the van slowly.
“You think they got in a shootout?”
“If they did, we would’ve heard the shots being fired when we were riding down the next street over.”
“Well, something happened. And I don’t like this feeling I’m getting in my stomach,” I said.
“I’m getting a weird feeling too,” Jeff said. “But I don’t know what the fuck to do.”
“Well, whatever you do, don’t stop.” I looked out the window on either side of the van.
Jeff kept his foot on the accelerator the entire time, and before we k
new it, we were off Johnson Street and right back on the next street we had just driven down. When we arrived at the corner to make the turn to drive back down Johnson Street again, he came to a complete stop at the stop sign.
“You’re not gonna go back down there, are you?”
“I wasn’t trying to, but I don’t want to leave Walt and Griff hanging.”
“Call one of their cell phones.”
“I ain’t got Walt’s number, but I got Griff ’s.”
“Well, call ’im then.”
Jeff sat there at the stop sign and pulled out his cell phone.
I instantly became nervous. “You gon’ stay right here at this stop sign and try to call him?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“I think you should move on and keep driving. If you sit at the stop sign, you gon’ bring attention to yourself. Remember, we are the only ones out here.”
“She’s right,” Tony said.
Jeff looked through the rearview mirror at Tony. “Nigga, shut the fuck up! Ain’t nobody talking to you.”
“Damn, champ. I was only trying to help,”
“Nigga, I ain’t cha champ!” Jeff roared. “And so you know, I got this shit over here covered, so take your mind off me and worry about yourself.”
“Yeah, a’ight.”
I chuckled to myself after I heard Jeff break down Tony’s dumb ass. The shit was funny as hell. And after I got my laugh on, I turned my attention back to Jeff. But before I could open my mouth to say something, Jeff had Griff on the phone.
“Nigga, where y’all at?” Jeff asked.
I couldn’t hear Griff ’s response, but I knew he couldn’t be that far away, because as soon as Jeff pulled off from the stop sign, he drove to the next block, which was Washington Street, and made a right.
After he disconnected the call, I asked, “Where they at?”
“Griff said they were walking up Washington Street toward Church Street.”
“Did they get Kasey?”
“He didn’t say.”
A few seconds later, Jeff pulled alongside the curb of Washington Street where Walt and Griff were waiting. They both jumped back into the van.