Wifey 4 Life

by Kiki Swinson

  He tried to respond to my question, but I interrupted him before he could utter one word. “I don’t want to hear you breathe my fucking name for no reason at all. After tonight, I don’t exist anymore. We are no longer related. I am dead as far as you’re concerned, so don’t try to find me. I don’t care if you’re on your deathbed, just leave well enough alone. And if I find out the Houston homicide detectives are looking for me, then you will have hell to pay. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded.

  I turned around and looked back in the direction of Walt and the other guys. I figured I had about thirty-five seconds to do or say whatever I needed to say to my uncle before they reached the van. I reached inside my handbag and grabbed the small utility knife I had attached to my nail clipper. Since his hands were tied behind his back, I leaned down and placed the knife in his hands. When I sat back up, I looked into his face and noticed how his expression had changed. I could tell that his spirits had lifted.

  “Use that to cut yourself loose,” I whispered to him.

  Unfortunately for him he couldn’t respond. Walt, Griff, and Jeff were already within arm’s reach of the van. When they grabbed the door to climb back into the van, my uncle and I both changed our expressions.

  “Is he behaving?” Walt wanted to know right after he climbed into the van.

  I cracked a half-smile and told him I had everything under control. As Jeff started up the ignition and drove the van away from the lake, I started to climb back into the last of seat of the van, but I decided against it this time, and stayed where I was, which was in the middle seat.

  Walt sat beside me, while my uncle lay on the floor. He placed his feet four inches away from my uncle’s face. “I ought to spit on you and kick you in your motherfucking face! The sight of you makes me sick to my stomach. And I can’t wait to get you in a place where no one will hear you while I torture your ass to death.”

  “Where are you taking him?” I asked.

  Griff suggested that we take him to this abandoned dumpsite in the Berkeley section of Norfolk, so when we were done with his body, we could just leave him there.

  Griff said, “No one is going to find him for at least a couple of months.” Then he smiled. “Probably longer than that.”

  I didn’t comment at all. My main focus was to figure out an escape plan for my uncle before Walt and the rest of the guys made him into mincemeat. I knew that if I tried to change Walt’s mind about killing Lanier, he’d probably look at me and laugh. The other guys probably would laugh in my face too. Not after he’d witnessed Walt kill Tony. Plus, he’d witnessed all three of them dispose of his body.

  I was an accessory to three counts of murder, and not only that, but I’d confessed and told my uncle that I’d witnessed Nikki’s murder, so I had more to lose than anybody. But I was still willing to set him free if I could kill the bastard who had hurt my mother.

  Down to the Wire

  The first ten minutes of the ride to Berkeley was pretty quiet until Walt started tormenting my uncle, kicking him a couple times in the stomach, talking a lot of shit to him, and reminding him that he planned to beat him when he got to the location.

  I noticed the fear in my uncle’s eyes grow. A small part of me felt sorry for him. If I didn’t get him out of this van before we got to that dumpsite in Berkeley, my chances of helping him escape would be gone. Time was running out.

  I looked down at my uncle while Walt continued to badger him. I couldn’t talk out loud, so I moved my mouth in hopes that he could read my lips. I instructed him to cut off the ropes from around his wrists.

  He looked at me like he didn’t understand, so I made a few hand gestures. I placed my finger against my wrist and moved it back and forth like I was slicing something. He got my drift then.

  Meanwhile, Jeff informed us that he needed to stop and get some gas.

  Walt didn’t think it was a good idea, but when Jeff stressed to him that they wouldn’t make it to the dumpsite unless he stopped, he said, “Look, I don’t care what you do, just as long as you don’t stop at a gas station that’s crowded with people.”

  “A’ight,” Jeff replied.

  I looked straight to the front of the van and noticed that the gas light was on. Then I looked back down at my uncle and started mouthing instructions to him again. I told him to get ready, and he seemed to understand.

  My heart started beating uncontrollably. It felt like I was the one trying to escape, not my uncle.

  Griff said, “Man, I’m so glad you’re stopping, because I gotta take a shit really bad.”

  “We don’t have time for that, Griff,” Walt snapped. “You gon’ have to tighten up them butt cheeks and hold back, ’cause we got a mission to complete.”

  Griff turned around in his seat. “I understand what you’re saying, Walt, but I ain’t gon’ be able to hold this shit any longer. I’ve been holding this shit since I left your house.”

  Walt shook his head. “Nah, I can’t let you get out this van.”

  “Yo, Walt, I ain’t bullshitting you. My stomach is killing me right now. And if I don’t take care of it real soon, I’m gon’ end up shitting on myself.”

  Jeff started cracking up with laughter.

  “Griff, you know this ain’t how we conduct business. And, Jeff, you know you should’ve stopped and got some motherfucking gas before you picked me up. All this stopping shit is for amateurs, and I ain’t no motherfucking amateur. So y’all need to get y’all shit together.”

  “I got my shit together,” Jeff said as he pulled into a BP service station off Chesapeake Boulevard, a quarter mile from the Five Points intersection. “If we weren’t riding all over the Tidewater area, I wouldn’t have to stop and get gas. I had a little over a quarter tank, so that was enough for the trip out Huntersville, Military Highway, and that spot out at Virginia Beach. But when you added Barraud Park and fucking Ocean View, that kind of took it to the limit.”

  When Jeff pulled up to a gas pump and shut off the ignition, Griff immediately opened the passenger door and hopped out of his seat without saying one word. He shut the door behind him and raced off to use the service station restroom.

  Jeff burst into laughter as he watched Griff race toward the store. “I’ma laugh my ass off if that nigga shits on himself.”

  Walt wasn’t in the mood. “Can you hurry up and pump the gas so we can get the fuck out of here?”

  Jeff looked back at Walt before he got out of the van and assured him that he was on it. Then he got out of the van and closed the door.

  I looked back at my uncle. He was looking toward the van door. I could tell he was trying to avoid eye contact with Walt as much as possible.

  Walt sat in the chair next to me with an evil expression on his face, staring at Jeff until he disappeared behind the door of the service station.

  While Walt’s attention was on Jeff, my uncle managed to cut the rope off his wrists. I watched him through my peripheral vision. I didn’t want to focus my attention on him, because Walt would have caught on to what he was doing.

  Griff was in the bathroom stall almost one hundred and fifty feet away from the van, while Jeff was in the store paying for the gas. This is the perfect opportunity.

  I looked through the window of the service station and noticed that there were two people ahead of Jeff. I figured I only had about a minute and a half before the window of opportunity would be closed.

  Walt’s focus was on everything around us. Every time someone walked by the van, or a car pulled up to a gas pump, he made it his business to turn around to see what they were doing.

  I could tell that he felt uneasy and paranoid because of everything going on around him. This was the perfect opportunity for me to execute my plan.

  I still had the gun in my hand from when he gave it to me earlier. I pulled back on the hammer very lightly, so he wouldn’t hear it, and then raised it and pointed it at the side of Walt’s head. “Don’t say a word unless I tell you to!”

>   Walt tried to turn his head around to look at me, but I pressed the gun against his temple and told him not to move.

  He chuckled like he found what I was doing very amusing. “What’s going on, baby girl? You don’t like being on my team anymore?” He grinned.

  “Just hand me your gun.”

  As Walt handed me his gun, Lanier brought his arms from around his back and pulled himself up into a sitting position. His eyes grew wide at seeing Lanier free. Once I had Walt’s gun in my hand, I immediately stuck it down into the waistband of my shorts.

  “I can’t believe you helping this motherfucker after all that shit he put you through earlier. You told me he tried to kill you, so what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I was nervous, and Walt could sense it, because he made the comment that if I gave him his gun back that very moment, he would act like what I did never happened. As much as I wanted to do just that, I knew he wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easy.

  According to Lanier, he’d whipped my mother’s ass because she tried to sabotage his plans for her, so why wouldn’t he do the same shit to me? Not only that, but he hated when someone pointed a gun at him and didn’t pull the trigger. Lanier had done it to him years ago, and now I was doing the exact same thing, so I knew he wouldn’t have mercy on me.

  “I want you to get out of the van very slowly,” I told Walt.

  He leaned forward, grabbed the door handle, and slid the door back slowly.

  “Don’t open it up too wide.”

  He pulled the door back halfway. “Is this good?”

  “Yeah, that’s good. Now get out very slowly.” I continued to point the gun directly at him.

  While he was exiting the van, I looked over his shoulders to see if Jeff had gotten to the register and paid for his gas yet, and sure enough, he was at the register handing the cashier his money. In less than ten seconds Jeff would be right back at the van.

  “Hurry up! You’re moving too slowly.” I pushed Walt in the back. I must have thrown him off balance, because he stumbled a bit when his feet hit the ground.

  By then my uncle had managed to break free of the duct tape around his ankles, so he was ready to go. Without saying a word, he climbed into the driver’s seat and started up the ignition.

  I immediately looked at him and asked, “What the hell you doing?”

  “I’m about to get us out of here! Now hurry up and slam the door closed!”

  Right when I grabbed on the door handle to slam the door shut, Jeff reappeared and gave me a puzzled look. I was sure his little mind was wondering why Walt was standing outside the van, not to mention, why his van’s ignition had been started when he’d shut it off before he’d stepped out of the van to pay for the gas.

  Walt yelled, “They trying to get away!”

  I assume Jeff had a delayed reaction. He started sprinting after us only after Lanier yelled, “Close the door!” and sped out of the service station, and into oncoming traffic on Chesapeake Boulevard.

  From the back window I saw Jeff pull out his gun and aim it at us as, but for some reason, he didn’t fire.

  I screamed at the top of my voice when Lanier sped in front of this eighteen-wheeler, almost causing us to get sideswiped.

  The truck driver pressed his hand against his horn and held it down for dear life. The shit scared the hell out of me. The sound of his horn echoed in my ears, causing me to cringe, and I fell down to my knees, knocking the gun out of my hand to the floor, and it slid underneath the front passenger seat.

  I crawled toward the back of that seat and reached my hand underneath it, trying to feel my way around until I located it. It was very difficult to put my hands on it because of how fast my uncle was driving.

  When he sped through the red light at the intersection of Five Points, I honestly thought he had lost his motherfucking mind. I heard at least four different car horns blowing. I yelled, “If you don’t slow down, you’re gonna get us killed!”

  “I’m just trying to get away from those niggas as quickly as possible,” he yelled, panting.

  I finally located the gun, grabbed it, and removed it from underneath the chair. When I tried to stand, I felt the van jerk a couple of times. “What’s wrong? Why is the van jerking?” I asked as I sat back on the chair.

  Right when he was about to tell me what was wrong, I had already figured it out, because the van’s ignition turned off completely. We were coasting on fumes, and then after the van moved a few more feet, it stopped.

  We were only one block away from where we’d left Walt and Jeff. They both knew the van was on empty, so we couldn’t get very far. There was no doubt in my mind that they were already en route to kill us both.

  We had reached the ramp to jump on Highway 64. We knew we couldn’t take the chance of running away from the highway to get into the nearby neighborhood called Norview, because we could run right into Walt and Jeff. So we got out of the van and fled on foot toward the traffic on the interstate, praying we wouldn’t get hit.

  My uncle didn’t look back once as he ran down the side ramp of the highway. Cars blew their horns at us when they drove by. I tried my best to keep up with my uncle, but I couldn’t.

  “Get the hell out of the way!” one driver yelled.

  When I heard gunfire, I looked back and noticed Walt and Jeff were both on our tails. Jeff was the only one with a pistol, so he didn’t hesitate to bust two shots at us. I was tired of running, but when I heard those shots, I got a burst of energy from out of nowhere.

  “Uncle Lanier, they’re behind us, and they’re shooting!” I yelled.

  “Shoot back at them!”

  Now I didn’t know how to aim a gun and fire a shot at someone while they were in pursuit, and I wasn’t about to stop and try it, so I kept it moving.

  “Shit!” I said, realizing I had just lost the gun I had placed in the waistband of my shorts. I started to stop to pick it up, but Walt and Jeff were gaining yards on me. “They’re gaining on us!” I screamed. I was in bad shape. My heart was beating uncontrollably, and I was running out of breath.

  “You better come on,” Lanier yelled back. Saving me from them was the last thing on his mind. He was more concerned about himself, and he didn’t try to hide it.

  I don’t know how, but we ran all the way down Highway 64 until we got to the overpass. Then we ran down a small hill of grass to get to the street underneath the highway, which was Virginia Beach Boulevard.

  When I reached the bottom of the hill, I heard voices behind me. I looked back and saw Walt and Jeff at the top of the fucking hill. At that very moment, my life flashed in front of me, and this time around I saw my life come to an end in that cloud. I seriously wanted to stop in my tracks and surrender. At least then I could finally be put out of my misery.

  But then something inside me lit up and told me to save myself, and after this last time, I wouldn’t ever have to run for my life again. I guess that was all I needed to know, because I put one foot in front of the other and sprinted toward the underpass.

  I turned the corner to travel under the underpass, and my uncle had vanished. Fear engulfed my entire body. I didn’t know if I was coming or going, but I kept on running.

  It was extremely dark under the tunnel, but that really didn’t matter to me, because my mission was to get as far away as I could from these niggas. They were after my blood, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.

  While I was running underneath this dark underpass, going in the direction of Newtown Road, I heard a voice. It scared me to death. I thought it was some homeless person trying to get my attention, but when I realized the person knew my name, I stopped in my tracks.

  “Kira, I’m up here,” my uncle said.

  I was out of breath, yet I somehow mustered up the energy to climb up the slanted, cement wall. When I got to the top, I saw my uncle hiding inside a little box-shaped compartment right under the highway above us.

  “Where is the other gun?”

 
“I dropped it when I was running down the fucking highway, but I still got this one,” I replied in a low whisper. I showed him the gun with the silencer.

  He took the gun out of my hand and clutched it in his.

  Not even a second passed before Walt and Jeff came running around the wall of the underpass. Jeff still had his gun.

  My uncle and I were sitting in a small crawl space at the top of the underpass, and those two bastards had to run past us to get out. He leaned into my ear and whispered, “You know that if we don’t get them now, they gon’ keep coming after us?”

  I nodded, not wanting to make any noise. I couldn’t afford to draw any attention to us. Right now we had an advantage because we were the predator stalking our prey.

  “Stay right here. I’ll be right back.” Uncle Lanier stood and snuck quietly down the wall, so he could catch Walt and Jeff before they were able to pass us.

  I watched him closely as he tiptoed toward them without being heard. When he got close enough he aimed the gun at them and pulled the trigger. I couldn’t hear the shots because of the silencer, but when Jeff collapsed on the ground beside Walt and didn’t move again, I knew he had gotten hit and was probably dead.

  Walt must’ve seen Jeff fall to the ground, because he turned around and looked back for a brief second, and then he started running faster.

  I thought he might have stopped to pick up Jeff ’s gun, but he must’ve figured out that would’ve made him an easy target.

  My uncle hurried to catch Walt like he was in the fifty-yard dash, but I couldn’t see which direction they ran because of where I was sitting.

  It was pitch-dark under the underpass, but I noticed that cars slowed down as they rode by Jeff ’s body. I saw one woman on her cell phone talking to someone. I didn’t know who she was talking to, but it would just be my luck if she was calling the police.

  I knew it was time for me to get the hell out of Dodge. I got up from where I was sitting and walked down the wall as quickly as possible. Cars were still slowing down when they passed Jeff ’s body, so I covered my face to prevent anyone from seeing me when I got close to his body.