My hands were untied. I stood in front of them shaking, naked, and filthy, with the barn off to the side, and the woods at my back. They did more coke off the hood of the car before turning on the headlights. I held up my hand to block out the lights.
“Run, rabbit! Run!” one of them shouted. “We’ll even give you a head start.”
I turned, running toward the woods behind me. Their laughter was getting further and further away. When I passed the barn, I acted like I was going into the woods but I ran around the side, watching them do more hits of coke off of the hood of the Jeep. They gave each other high fives before they each broke off into the woods in different directions. Once they were out of sight, I sprinted with everything I had toward the Jeep. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely get the door open. Once inside, I frowned at the video camera sitting on the dashboard. It had been recording for the last two hours.
There wasn’t any time for me to figure out who was who or what was what. I turned the key in the ignition and peeled backward down the dirt road, throwing mud and rocks spraying. My clothes were in a ripped pile in the backseat, so I was forced to drive naked. When I was closer to the city I slowed down enough to grab my phone. I called Genesis.
“I was just kidnapped and tortured and—”
“Let me guess, was it three Swedish guys?”
“Yes, and I’m driving to your place right now. I don’t have any clothes. I’m naked.”
“Hold on, hold on, Novie. They didn’t give you your clothes back?”
“Give me my clothes? Nigga, they just threatened to rape me in the woods if I got caught. I’m sorry if I didn’t wait around to see if they’d politely hand me my shit.”
Genesis chuckled in the phone, and I wished he was in front of me so I could ram the truck into his smug face.
“Novie, there should be a video camera on the dashboard. They’re film directors. They like to do these dumbass gag reels with retarded scenarios. Constantinus, I think, is the one who likes to dress up like a zombie or an alien and go running out into the woods after you. They might have switched it up so that just as you think you’re about to get raped or killed, he comes crashing up on your assailant. These things sell big overseas.”
“What? They do what?”
“Yeah, I thought Farrah explained all of that.”
“Farrah didn’t explain a damn thing. And I was naked, completely, fucking naked. I’m still naked, and now I’m driving a stolen Jeep with God only knows what kind of contraband in it.”
“Just come here. I’ll handle it. Everything will be fine. I know it’s not funny, but I think you’re probably the first person to get out of the woods. I’m sure I’ll be getting a call from Farrah when the guys hike themselves to the nearest gas station.”
“If this is the type of shit I have to look forward to working with you two, I quit. It’s not worth my sanity.”
NOVIE
29
First Response
I was starting to get that lightheaded, queasy feeling that had been hitting me on and off for the last few weeks. Something in my gut told me to pick up a pregnancy test on my way back to the house. I grabbed a four-pack just to be on the safe side. Whichever result I got, I wanted to be certain of. Genesis had said several times that he didn’t want a baby. If that was the case, I needed him to be just as adamant about wearing a damn condom.
The house was empty when I walked in. Genesis wouldn’t be home from work until later and Kenisha was staying at a friend’s or a boyfriend’s, I wasn’t sure which one anymore. I threw my jacket on a chaise lounge in the front sitting room and kicked off my shoes. My eyes rolled at the filth Kenisha had left in the kitchen. The black granite countertops were covered in random empty cookie containers and halfway closed chip bags. The juice and half a rotisserie chicken was left sitting out. She even left the damn mayonnaise sitting out on the counter without the lid.
I know this heffa hasn’t made a sandwich or whatever and left this shit like this. It didn’t make any sense for me to be on a constantly shortening leash when Genesis let that girl get away with murder.
Grabbing a cucumber and tomato out of the fridge, I sliced them up into a bowl with a splash of vinegar. This is all I’d been thinking about all day. I cleaned up whatever I used, leaving the rest of that mess exactly as I found it. Let Genesis clean up after her. My behind was ready for a hot shower and a good hour-long nap. Since neither of them liked anything I cooked, I wasn’t even going to waste my time trying to find a recipe to impress their fucked-up taste buds. They could order a pizza or get something from that new service that delivered damn near everything under the sun.
I’d started toward my bathroom when an idea stopped my feet. Genesis always spent so much time in the bathroom with the door shut tight. I could stare under the door and see him pacing back and forth, or he’d be in one place for what would seem like forever. I tiptoed into his immaculate bathroom. Everything was in its place. The floor and mirrors were spotless. I looked in the medicine cabinet, disappointed to find nothing but Motrin and allergy pills. The linen closet was actually in the bathroom. I opened the doors wide and stared at his pristine, perfectly folded white sheets. All except for one at the very top. I had to use the second step as a foothold, but after I pulled myself up, I found it. It was a poetry book, or a journal of some kind sitting on the top shelf underneath a crooked towel.
I turned to page one. Genesis’s handwriting immediately leapt off the page.
GENESIS KANE’S JOURNAL
30
In the movies, the nigga always dies first. Those were my exact thoughts as I stood on the upper level of the parking garage beneath the downtown hospital. Ladybug, my tactical exploration robot, had run herself into a dead spot. I couldn’t remote control her from the surveillance van, so, of course, me and myself aka the only nigga, had to step in for a closer look. Technically, I wasn’t the only nigga. There was my boy who was out sick, Warren, the blue-eyed bandit who we called Foreign. His moms looked like Weezy Jefferson, and his pops looked like Red Foxx. We swore up and down that nigga was the milkman’s baby. If I was thinking, I would’ve stayed home and called in sick too. A day at home with a whining woman and an even whinier baby didn’t seem so bad compared to the day I was having.
The garage was silent as a tomb and hot as an oven. There were eight of us working the FBI Explosives Ordinance field office in Norfolk, Virginia. Overtime was becoming a popular subject with all the work we’d been getting thrown our way lately. Let’s just say, it takes a real special motherfucker to run in and finger fuck an explosive when everyone else is running away. No one could do what we did or understand the rush you feel from death hissing down the back of your neck.
My hand wandered aimlessly to my left side, to where I kept the five-pointed Gold Medal of Valor in my pants pocket. They give it to agents as recognition for extreme acts of heroism. It was awarded to my pops when I was nine. He was one of the best too, before he got killed in the line of duty. Now his medal went with me on all my bomb-runs. It was a good-luck thing. Morbid, I know. But it made me feel like he was watching over me, bringing me some guidance.
It had to have been working because I was still alive. Earlier, the calls had started coming in one by one. Protocol required us to send at least two techs out to oversee bomb disposal, but we had all been dispatched to different locations. So far, all the other locations had come back as false alarms. I sure as hell hoped this was one as well. Sweat stung my eyes, forcing me to squint through the hazy visor of my blast suit. It was ninety pounds of fire-resistant Nomex and Kevlar.
“Jarryd, what do you see, son? My neck been bothering me all morning.” Peterson’s voice crackled through the two-way com in my headgear.
He called everyone son. Even though most of us were in our late twenties, and he wasn’t any older than forty-five. He’d been through more than any of us, even did a short stint in Kuwait until he got caught in some crossfire. The only thing holdin
g that nigga together was metal pins and grit; 148 of them ran up his spine. He always complained about his neck hurting right before some shit popped off. Hell, I trusted Peterson’s neck better than any bomb-sniffing dog.
I squinted through one eye, keeping the other closed. I always forgot how hot it got inside these suits until my black ass was back inside one, cursing because we didn’t have the newer air-conditioned ones.
“One minute, sir. Right now, I can’t see shit for my own sweat.”
My heart was karate-kicking the inside of my chest, making my breath come in short, garlic-scented spurts. Lunch had consisted of garlic-knots from a little hole-in-the-wall Italian spot that we went to every Friday called Feldecci’s. They were always on point, but I don’t think there was anything on the menu that wouldn’t leave your breath humming for the rest of the day. That wasn’t the worst of it; the real problem was me. I was shaky and unfocused from slamming back Monster energy drinks to compensate for lack of sleep. This wasn’t the kind of job that allowed for a nigga to not be well rested, but try explaining that to a crab-assy bundle of constant tears and shit.
My new baby boy, Jarryd Junior, was eleven or thirteen weeks; hell if I know. I can’t keep track of that shit. Tima’d been celebrating everything from his first shit to his first sneeze. Let me know when that little nigga hits one aka twelve months so I can crack a beer or something. Since the day he was born, I hadn’t eaten, fucked, or slept the same. How was having a baby supposed to be this big joyous occasion when all it did was managed to erase all the joy out of my life? Now there was just constant pressure to earn more and buy the best of everything. When I wasn’t working or stressing about work, you’d think I’d get to relax, but, nah, I was expected to spend every free minute with that little nigga.
We had the biggest house in one of the best neighborhoods, and now she had this grand delusion of getting an even bigger house in a neighborhood the director of the FBI probably couldn’t even afford. All that shit was starting to make me bitter and cynical. I’d even googled whether it was normal for a man to hate his own baby. It didn’t feel natural. All the sites said I was most likely suffering from some kind of male-postpartum depression. Fuck that, I’m a damn man. Men don’t get depressed or upset. Only a woman would write some bullshit like that. Men get angry; we get mad, and if I was feeling any kind of way, I was pissed the fuck off. Not fucking depressed.
Tima used to draw a nigga baths at night with candles and wine. She used to cook four-course dinners, and now she be on this four-day dinner routine. That’s what I call it when she makes some shit and stretches it out so we have it every day except Friday. Back in the day, a nigga was taken care of. I ain’t mind handing over a paycheck or buying her anything under the sun when I wasn’t eating spaghetti four days a week. I wasn’t mentally prepared for this life of baby talk, baby proofing, and baby bullshit.
“Son, are okay in there?” Peterson sounded on edge. “Akins is on his way back since his call was a false alarm. We can bring him in if you aren’t up to snuff. I’m sure the new baby is wearing you down.”
My mind was all over the place. I’d started to tell Peterson I wasn’t on my A-game, but I manned up. Nah, there was no way I’d admit to getting mind-fucked by an infant. Unlike parenting, I’d been doing this type of stuff my whole career. Everybody can’t do what the fuck I do. Niggas run screaming out of the places I voluntarily walk into.
“I’m solid, sir, just hot as fuck in here. This ninety-degree weather ain’t helpin’.”
I flexed my fingers, hyping myself up as I maneuvered through rows of cars toward the crumbling column in the center. Ladybug sat waiting in a puddle nearby. I removed my ID badge from the utility holster on my side and inserted it into her driver. “Don’t worry, Lady, you just sit here and watch me work. I’ll be right back.” Yeah, I talked to her like she was a real person. I talked to anything with artificial intelligence. If there was ever a robot uprising, your boy would be safe. I’d tried to explain that shit to Tima, but she’d just get pissed off. Let her tell it, I talked to my machines more than I talked to her or my own son. You damn right; my machines had enough sense not to talk back.
Ladybug’s system recalibrated with a series of loud clicks and whirrs. NASA held the original patents for her design. She was made for exploring planets and collecting samples. We kept a lot of the original specifications so she could run on autopilot or remote control. After her reboot, she’d automatically trek back to the recon van.
“All right, Ladybug, you watch my back.” I gave the metallic claw on top of her canister a fist-bump before moving on.
I checked the numbers on each column until I got to the one with D8 stenciled in faded red letters. The red paint flaked off the side. Someone had made a 9-1-1 call saying there was a suspicious object sitting in front of it. I squashed the fear gripping at my insides and cleared my dry, scratchy throat as I laid eyes on it.
“Sir, this is some devilish but beautiful shit. Are y’all getting this?” I angled my head to make sure the camera mounted on the side of my visor could pick everything up. “The detonator has a bilateral release trigger. One side is an explosive, and I’m talkin’ citywide radius. But the other one is some kind of haz canister, and I don’t know what the fuck’s inside it,” I replied, anxious to either get out of there or get to work.
Peterson made a deep, gravely sound in the back of his throat. It was a cross between a grunt and groan. I’d heard it before. A year ago, I’d been awarded a Congressional Gold Medal for diffusing a similar situation near the Federal Building downtown. It was a lot bigger and nastier than this one; anything could have set that shit off.
“Well, all right, Jarhead.”
Peterson called me by my old nickname, making me feel more like my old self and less like the old man I was being forced to become. Before I joined this bomb squad that my wife wanted me to quit, I was a marine specializing in explosives. My ace back then was a goofy nigga named Chief. He saved my ass so many times and vice versa, we swore if one of us ever hit the lottery or got rich, we’d come back for the other one.
“Don’t stand there clutchin’ your nuts, split some wires,” Peterson ordered. “I don’t know about your house, but it’s wet-mouf-Wednesday up in mine. I’ve got to get my ass home before the old lady has too many mojitos. She’s sloppy and slobby after three. My balls don’t take too kindly to cold drool,” he barked in what was an obvious attempt to lighten up the tension in the air.
Everyone was holed up in the surveillance van topside watching the feed from the camera mounted to my head on a closed-circuit network. Every time I diffused a bomb, I’d fast-forward to afterward in my head. I imagined myself celebrating in some big old encouraging titties. I didn’t celebrate at strip clubs anymore; you get a wife and a kid and somehow, everything that was once a reality became fantasy. But the sooner I got this over with, the sooner I could throw back a cold beer and maybe talk Tima into giving me some head.
The headgear was making it too hard for me to focus. I’d sent my spare drones out for repair. Budget cuts had everything stuck in a holding pattern somewhere. Ladybug being out of commission meant I was the damn drone today.
Even though it was a stupid move, I removed my headgear, placing it on the ground beside me. Peterson’s voice was a muffled string of what I could only imagine to be f-bombs and curse words. He could string together words that’d make you feel lower than dirt and more useless than shit.
The air was still and thick with the smell of exhaust and concrete. Sweat poured down the back of my neck. Normally, adrenaline rushes would send me into a calm, methodical trance. But that wasn’t happening today. I sucked in a few shaky lungfuls of air, hoping it’d squelch my nerves.
I knelt as carefully as I could in front of the white tank with death flashing all over it. The device wasn’t wired like anything I’d ever seen before. A sinking panicky feeling started to roll itself around in my gut. My brain was processing everything at warp s
peed, connecting lines and wires to switches. This wasn’t your normal, everyday device. The orange-tinted lights of the garage reflected off the flawless chrome valves. Every piece of metal was perfectly polished. There wasn’t a fleck of dust or an oily fingerprint anywhere on it. It was finely detailed all the way down to the wooden crate it sat on top of. I tried to get a look underneath it for a fail-switch.
If I didn’t have perfect 20/20 vision, I might’ve missed the clear wire running along the underside of the device. It was thinner than fishing line and slightly shaking, which was weird because there was no breeze in the parking garage. A hundred questions drifted through my mind as I rose on shaky legs. Peterson needed to know about this. I was reaching for my helmet when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. My eyes locked with his; dread filled me to the core of my being.
“Don’t move,” I said in a calm, quiet voice.
The man standing across the garage stared back at me. His yellow Polo shirt was dirty and ripped around the collar. Blood ran from his nose, and his left eyelid was swollen to about the size of an egg. What the fuck is he doin’ in here? They said the garage was all clear.
I edged toward him, trying to figure out if he was a victim or the perp. I followed the line from where it started to where it rested in his bloody hand. His eyes were panicky and glazed with pain, but he didn’t make a sound. If he yanked or dropped that string we were done.
I decided to skip protocol and reason with him. There wasn’t going to be any time for me to call this in.
“You don’t have to do this, man. I’m sure we can solve whatever the problem is reasonably.”
Sweat gleamed on his forehead. A nasty purplish-blue knot was forming at the right side of his temple. His lips barely moved. “Run.”
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