Most Wanted

by Michele Martinez

  “Guess they’ll have to leave you a voice mail,” Slice said, smiling sarcastically. “Now, about the merchandise…”

  Drag it out longer. Maybe somebody will come, she told herself. “What merchandise?”

  “Don’t be acting like you don’t know. That would upset me. You don’t wanna see some shit I do when I’m upset, you feel me?” he said in a low, intense tone. He had the eyes of some night creature—tiny, gleaming, dead eyes much too small even for his narrow face.

  “I’m gonna tell you everything, okay? I don’t want to get hurt. I need to make sure we understand each other, that’s all.”

  “What the fuck merchandise you think I’m talking about? Ladies’ underwear?” Slice yelled. Bigga laughed uproariously.

  “You’re saying there are drugs hidden here? Why would there be drugs hidden in Jed Benson’s house?”

  She didn’t even see it coming, he was that fast. In the blink of an eye, Slice smashed the butt of his gun against the side of her head. Pain exploded in her skull. She shot back in time. “Daddy! No! Noooo!” “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” A blinding blow to her head, then darkness. But a second later, she was back in Jed Benson’s office, conscious, hearing and seeing better than she wanted to. She raised her fingers to the spot the pain radiated from. They came away bloody.

  The blow might have thrown somebody else into a panic. But for Melanie it served as a wake-up call. It reminded her. You had to fight back, or the animals would win. They’d won last time. Things had never been the same after the robbery. Her father had never spent another night under their roof. Years of rehab in San Juan, and then he ended up leaving them, marrying his nurse. She’d seen him twice in the last ten years. She wouldn’t let the animals win this time, goddamn it. She found her rage and, at the heart of it, her calm.

  “You think I won’t hurt you? Next time it’s a bullet, bitch!”

  “Okay,” she said, “I hear you. I’ll play ball.” Until I can figure out how to kill you, you scum.

  “Where the fuck the drugs? And don’t you be acting like you don’t know, because I know that’s why you came here.”

  “I’m getting to it. You know we were up at Benson’s place in Millbrook this morning, right?” She was breathing heavily, her ears still ringing, but she was more determined than ever before.

  “That true, Bigga?” Slice asked.

  “Toldja they’s somebody with that police who killed No Joke,” Bigga said.

  “It was her? Why the fuck you didn’t body ’em when you had a clear shot, then? They killed my dog.” He grabbed Melanie by the throat. She struggled for air. “Fucking bitch, you killed my dog! That dog was a warrior. You know what his name was? No Joke, because he wasn’t no fucking joke. Me and him been through mad shit together. You gonna have to pay for that.”

  He let go of her throat, took a step back, and raised his gun. She couldn’t let him shoot her, because then he would win. She didn’t care if she lived or died, but she cared if he did.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “We found the trap. The trap in the car, okay? I have the blueprints to this house.”

  “Yeah, Slice, get the product first, then body her,” Bigga said.

  “Okay, right, Big.” Slice dropped his arm. Melanie breathed again. “I get carried away. Then I don’t get the information I need. I got to focus. One thing at a time. Yo, thank you, son.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Bigga said.

  “So you found the blueprints. Where they at? ’Cause this bitch useless,” Slice said, pointing at Sophie, lying so still she might have been dead. “Think you mighta OD’d her on that shit, Big.”

  Melanie’s brain felt intensely focused. She saw an opening.

  “Dan O’Reilly, the FBI agent, he took them to my office and put them in the evidence vault,” she lied coolly. “We were planning to show them to a trap expert to help us figure it out.”

  “If that’s true, why you here now?” Slice asked.

  “I wanted to get a head start. You know, take credit for finding it first.”

  Slice nodded. He believed her.

  “So she got to call O’Reilly and tell him to bring the blueprints here, then,” Bigga interjected.

  Yes! That was exactly the result she was aiming for. Better Dan than nobody. At least she thought he’d try to prevent her death. But Slice was too smart.

  “What the fuck, Big? This why I tell you to keep your stupid-ass mouth shut. That would get us locked up. We use our own people. Here, take my heat and watch her while I make some calls.”

  Slice handed Bigga the gun and retreated to the hallway, pulling his cell phone from his pocket as he went. She heard beeping as he hung up and dialed repeatedly. He was paging somebody. Melanie tried to focus, but she couldn’t help replaying what he’d said a moment earlier. Calling Dan would get them locked up. So Dan wasn’t on their payroll? He wasn’t working with them? God, she prayed that was what it meant!

  Out in the hallway, Slice’s cell phone rang, and he answered. His voice filtered, low and intense but clearly audible, through the open doorway.

  “Yo, son, you ain’t jumpin’ on my beeps like you should be,” Slice said. “Don’t gimme that shit. Now you gotta prove your loyalty. I need you to do something for me…. Yes, now! …I don’t give a fuck if you busy. This more important…. Don’t you be making me think nothing. …I ain’t your bitch, so why you trying to fuck me?…You better be jumping on this, or you gonna wake up dead. …Okay, that’s more like it…. Good…. This is what you do. The blueprints be in the vault in the prosecutor’s office. I need you to go in there and get ’em.”

  Slice had spoken of using his own people, but he was obviously talking to an insider, to one of Melanie’s people, somebody who could get into the vault in her office. Rommie Ramirez. It had to be.

  While Slice talked, Bigga stood leaning against the massive wooden desk. He had the sort of fat, doughy face that looked benevolent on some people. On him it was merely vacant and self-indulgent. His arms crossed, he held the gun casually against his chest, watching Melanie quietly.

  “Who’s that on the phone with Slice, Rommie Ramirez?” she asked.

  “Shut the fuck up. We ask the questions ’round here,” Bigga said.

  “Whoever it is, maybe if I talked to them, I could give them a better sense of where to look for the blueprints.”

  “Open your mouth again and I tape it shut.”

  As she watched him warily, something clicked inside her throbbing head. She put two and two together. Bigga was the one who’d shot at her at the Benson estate this morning. Bigga was Dan’s snitch. But no sooner had she taken heart from that thought than warning bells went off. Which way did it shake out for her prospects of survival that Dan and Bigga were working together?

  A FEW MINUTES LATER, SLICE WALKED BACK into the room. “Now we in play. If the blueprints be where she say, they’re on the way. If not, she don’t live another day.”

  “Awright!” Bigga said admiringly. “Now what?”

  “We wait. Keep the gun on her.”

  Slice kicked aside debris to clear a space on the floor and, extracting a small GameBoy from the pocket of his baggy pants, slid down to a sitting position against the wall near the doorway. The beeps emitted by the video game lent an incongruously festive air to the dismal basement. Bigga stood watching Slice.

  “I said watch her. What the fuck you watching me for?” Slice barked.

  “Nuthin’. Whatever.”

  “So don’t fucking look. You disturbing my concentration.”

  “I’m hungry,” Bigga whined.

  “You always hungry. That’s how come you so fat.”

  “I’m starving, bro. I need me something delicious. Lemme go get some Chinese or something before the action start. I saw a place when we was driving.”

  Slice looked up from his game, annoyed. “You remember that last job we pulled in Bushwick? You couldn’t climb in the window because you was so fucking fat, and that
motherfucker Arturo broke out. We didn’t get nothing off’n him?”

  “Yeah?”

  “So I’m putting you on a diet. No food for you.”

  Melanie had followed this conversation intently, flooded with relief that Slice wouldn’t let Bigga leave. She cherished the hope that Bigga was on Team America, working for Dan, and that when push came to shove, he would help her out. Despite her bravado, she had no interest in being left alone with Slice. She might be reckless, but she wasn’t stupid. Slice would kill her just for kicks, even if it made no sense for his game plan, so how could she predict his next move?

  Bigga sighed and sat back down on the desk. Slice returned to his GameBoy. As they sat there, the silence broken only by beeps from the GameBoy and the noise of Bigga’s stomach growling, the air putrid with a wet, burned smell, Melanie’s confidence withered and disappeared. She realized she was right near her apartment, that her beautiful baby was mere blocks away. She thought about going out with the stroller on Monday night, smelling the smoke, following it here. Her foolish pride had made her run after the Benson case, and now it would cost her her life. And ruin Maya’s. Maya would be motherless, Steve left to raise her alone, and Melanie had only her own ego to blame. She knew what it was like, growing up with one parent, always feeling the absence of the other, and now she’d inflicted it on her daughter, something she’d vowed never to let happen. In spite of herself, Melanie started to heave and shake with suppressed sobs. Goddamn it, she was thinking, she wouldn’t give that bastard the satisfaction of seeing her cry! But thinking also about the gaping hole she’d be leaving in her daughter’s life, she couldn’t help it.

  “Aw, fuck, shut the fuck up!” Slice yelled. Just then Bigga’s stomach let out a loud rumble. “You, too, shut up with that foul shit! Between her whining and your disgusting noises, you both making me sick.”

  “I need something to eat,” Bigga said calmly.

  “So go get it, then. I can’t fucking concentrate with shit like this going on.”

  “You want me to bring you back Chinese?” Bigga asked.

  “You crazy? I ain’t eating on no fucking job.”

  Bigga shrugged. “Okay, I’ll be back real fast,” he said, handing Slice the gun.

  A moment later the door to the street slammed behind him, leaving Melanie alone with Slice.

  48

  SLICE PLAYED WITH HIS GAMEBOY FOR WHAT seemed like a very long time. Eventually it let loose a particularly loud series of beeps, then fell silent. The game was over.

  “Hmm,” Slice said aloud. “My game all through. What I’m gonna do for some fun now?”

  Melanie had stopped crying a while ago. Her eyes clear and dry, she watched Slice with heightened senses. Slowly he pulled himself up from where he sat against the wall and replaced the game in his pocket. He tucked his gun into the waistband of his baggy pants. Deliberately he walked the few steps to where Melanie sat in the swivel chair, pulling a roll of duct tape from his pocket. She knew what it was for. She hadn’t been afraid before, but she was afraid now. She began to tremble visibly, and a savage smile curled the corners of Slice’s lips.

  He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “This my favorite part, bitch.”

  He jerked her arms forward and taped her hands together at the wrists.

  “The way I see it,” Slice said, “now we know where the blueprints is at and I sent somebody to get ’em, I don’t really need you no more. I’m free to do as I please. Don’t you agree?”

  Melanie opened her mouth to speak, but only a wet, choking sound emerged.

  “Cat got your tongue?” He tugged up his baggy pant leg and pulled a large knife, its curved, ten-inch blade glinting hypnotically, from a tan leather sheath strapped to his shin. He hefted the knife in his hand, testing its weight.

  “You took No Joke. But I still got my knife. You know, my knife my favorite way to kill. I much prefer it to my gun. Just, like, a personal-taste issue, you feel me?”

  He reached behind her and grabbed her hair, snapping her head back viciously to expose her throat. She exhaled all the air sharply from her lungs. The cold blade slithered along the skin under her chin. She felt the slightest sting.

  “Yup, still real sharp,” he said, holding it before her eyes. The edge of the blade bore a tiny bit of blood. Melanie began to shake with pure terror. Slice laughed.

  “WHAT THE FUCK YOU DOING, YOU FUCKING idiot?” cried Rommie from the doorway, his face contorted with rage. As Slice turned toward the sound of Rommie’s voice, brandishing the knife, Rommie swiftly closed the distance between them. Slice jabbed the knife straight at Rommie’s face.

  “You psycho piece of shit!” Rommie screamed, jumping back, chest heaving. “You gonna kill her? You always have to hurt somebody for kicks, and all it does is fuck my shit up! Those blueprints weren’t where she said. You kill her, we’ll miss the stash again.”

  “She saw my face. She can ID me. How I’m gonna let her live?”

  “Get the fucking product first. Moron!” Rommie’s mouth was wet with spittle, his face rabid, transformed, nothing like the hail-fellow-well-met guy Melanie knew. He reached his hand inside his elegant, dark suit jacket. Anticipating shots, Melanie threw herself off the chair, rolling away from them to a sheltered spot behind Jed’s desk. Focused on each other, neither man stopped her. She nearly cried out at the sight of Sophie’s inert body on the floor; she’d almost forgotten she was back here. Melanie watched until she saw Sophie’s chest moving up and down. Thank God, alive! Then, needing to know what was happening, she inched forward on her stomach and peeked around the side of the desk.

  Rommie and Slice loomed between her and the door, circling each other like boxers in a ring. By menacing Rommie with his knife, Slice managed to prevent him from drawing his gun. Rommie should have overpowered Slice easily, given his larger size. But Slice was lightning fast and armed. He danced around on the balls of his feet, his knife blade floating before him. As she watched, Rommie lunged for Slice’s wrist. Slice angled the blade just right so it slashed deeply into Rommie’s extended right hand.

  “Aaaaagh!” Rommie screamed, clutching his bleeding hand against his chest and backing away.

  “See what you get, fool?” Slice taunted.

  Slice advanced toward Rommie, ready to stab, and Rommie went for his jacket again, with his left hand this time. Just as he managed to pull out his gun, Slice pounced, slashing. Rommie ducked aside, but not fast enough to stop the blade from making contact with his left arm. Slice couldn’t halt his forward momentum. The tip of his knife pierced the wall near the door and stuck in the decayed plaster. As he yanked it out, Rommie swung around wildly, howling with pain from his slashed arm. His gun went flying from his left hand, sliding across the floor and coming to rest near the swivel chair Melanie had just vacated, a few feet from her face. She stared right into its gleaming barrel. It was a sleek Glock nine-millimeter, and she’d fired one just like it recently on a courtesy visit to the DEA range.

  Melanie thanked her lucky stars that Slice had taped her hands in front of her. The darkest parts of her past had prepared her for this moment: You acted. She’d learned that the hard way. You acted, or you became the victim. She lunged forward with all her strength, clasping the gun and rolling back into a sitting position, raising it in her bound hands to point straight at them.

  “Drop the knife!” she shouted.

  Slice whirled around and saw her holding the gun. Then he did something she hadn’t anticipated. He smiled, a condescending smile, as if the sight of her sitting there pointing a gun at him amused him considerably. His smile unnerved her for a second. But then it pissed her off.

  “Drop it, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!” she shouted again.

  Adrenaline pumping, breath coming in gasps, she lurched forward onto her knees, then sprang up toward Slice. She skidded to a halt less than five feet from him, pointing the gun straight at his head. Point-blank range, and she had decent aim. Assuming she was capa
ble of pulling the trigger, she wouldn’t miss. But did she really have it in her to shoot another human being? Even this one?

  Rommie, who’d been staring at his own blood dripping from his hands, looked back and forth between Slice and Melanie, dumbfounded, and did nothing.

  Slowly and matter-of-factly, holding Melanie’s gaze, Slice pulled up his pant leg as if he meant to sheathe his knife. Did he think that would satisfy her?

  “No, I said drop it! Drop it on the floor!”

  She watched in mute horror as he slid the knife into its sheath and calmly reached for the gun stuck in his waistband. The trajectory the gun followed from his waist to pointing at her head seemed to happen in slow motion. She closed her eyes and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. A long time later, she felt the kick. Seconds seemed to last hours as she saw her daughter’s face. An enormous wave of sorrow washed over her. Far away, an earsplitting report sounded, and a fine spray of blood covered her skin and clothes.

  49

  HOW FUNNY, MELANIE THOUGHT, DYING DOES FEEL like you’re still alive, but there’s no white light. The next second she opened her eyes. Slice slumped to the ground, a flap opened in the top of his skull.

  “Nice work,” Rommie said. “It was him or us. Motherfucker woulda bodied us for sure.”

  Wearing an expression of pure disgust, Rommie flipped over Slice’s lifeless body with his shoe so it lay facedown. Melanie was shaking all over. She couldn’t believe it. She looked down at the gun clutched in her tightly bound hands, and then back at Slice. She’d just killed a man.

  Seeing the state she was in, Rommie pressed his advantage. He leaned over, picked up Slice’s gun in his left hand, and leveled it at her.

  “Okay, Melanie, you had your fun. Enough cops and robbers. Drop the weapon.”