by Mike Sanders
A few minutes passed before I decided to wait inside the mall. From Applebee’s to the mall was only a short drive so I was there in less than five minutes. The mall’s parking area was crowded as hell and I had a hard time finding somewhere to park. I had to sit and wait for someone to leave before I could move into a space. I parked and put the empty gun into the glove compartment until I could figure out where to get rid of it.
I entered the mall through Belk’s entrance and strolled through the department store, browsing clothes and shoes. I’d only been inside the store for a few minutes when my stomach began churning, and I fought to choke back the vomit that was rising, but I had to dash for the ladies’ room. I barely made it to an empty stall before I lost whatever was in my system all over the seat of the toilet. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead and I was light-headed as hell for a minute. Visions of J.T.’s bloody body had my insides all twisted up and the more I thought about what I’d done the sicker I felt.
I managed to make it to the sink and splashed some water on my face, and then I leaned against the sink for balance because I was so dizzy. I had to stay like this for awhile before I could regain my composure because my head was spinning like a tornado.
“Damn, I need to sit my ass down,” I mumbled as the door opened and two young white girls entered, talking in a gossipy whisper. I ignored them while patting my forehead with a wet paper towel until I heard one of them mention something about a disturbance at the Long Shoreman restaurant. I was drying my face when one of the girls disappeared into an empty stall and the other stepped to the sink next to the one I was using.
I looked over at her and asked, “Excuse me, but did I just hear you say something happened at the Long Shoreman?”
“We were just down there. Someone got killed down the street from the Long Shoreman, not at the Long Shoreman,” she replied and looked at me as if she wanted to say “Duh.”
“Oh, okay Thanks,” I stated, trying to hold my tongue from checking her because of her sarcasm.
I tossed the paper towel into the trash, hurriedly exited the restroom, and headed back towards Belk’s to exit the same way I’d come in. I called my brother again while walking through the crowded parking lot, trying to remember where I’d parked. I prayed he would answer but to my dismay it went to voicemail again.
“Shit, Monk!” I cursed as I spotted my car.
I got inside and exited the mall’s parking lot. When I got to the stop light I realized I had no idea where the restaurant was located. So I drove to the nearest convenience store to get directions. Something deep down inside was telling me that something had happened to my brother.
Thanks,” I told the young man at the cash register inside the Handy Pantry I’d stopped at. He had just given me directions to the restaurant.
I was about to exit when I heard him ask me in a nervous tone, “You got a man?”
I was walking towards the door.
I smiled weakly, “Yeah, sweetie, I got a man.” I lied as I opened the door and proceeded to my car.
The youngman’s question made my stomach knot up again with thoughts of J.T.
The restaurant was only ten minutes away from the store and I had no problem finding it. When I did, I also found the spot where the murder had taken place. There were fire trucks, an ambulance, and several police cars all over the area. I immediately felt butterflies in the pit of my stomach. Female intuition was kicking in! I thought about the murder that I had committed and I decided to park the Chrysler at the restaurant because it had all the evidence in it. Down the street from where I parked was where all of the commotion was taking place. So that’s where I headed.
As I neared the alley where all of the police cars were, I tried to see if I could get a glimpse of anything that looked familiar. The scene was totally blocked off and all I could see were the blue and white cruisers that obscured the view. Besides myself, there were a few other people who stood by observing the activity as well. One man, a middle-aged white guy with a pot belly, looked as if he had been there for quite some time.
I asked, “What happened, do you know?”
He stood there eating a foot-long hotdog. Traces of ketchup stained his T-shirt and he had dried up mustard in the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, I know what happened. Somebody got iced, that’s what happened,” he stated non-chalantly, and then took another bite of his hotdog.
“Yeah, well, I can see that much,” I replied, looking away from him and back at the police cars. “I mean, white, black, male, female? Walking? On a bicycle or what?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t going to hear what I was already suspecting. My gut was telling me that my brother was somehow involved in whatever had taken place.
“A black guy in a white Chevy Cutlass. North Carolina plates,” he said in between bites, dripping more ketchup onto his shirt.
At the mention of the Cutlass, my knees got weak and my hands began trembling! I knew Monk had been driving D.C.’s white Cutlass and that revelation scrambled my thought process. As if my body moved on its own accord, I started running straight towards the crime scene. I heard the man’s voice behind me as I ran away from him.
“Hey! Where ya’ goin’? You can’t go in there!”
A few officers tried to stop me as well, screaming, “Hey lady! Hey you! Come back here!”
But when I got close enough to see that it was indeed D.C.’s car there was no stopping me. A hand grabbed me but I shook loose as I saw the body lying on the ground covered by a white sheet. The only thing that wasn’t covered was the victim’s feet, and I immediately recognized the blue and grey Prada sneakers I’d given Monk for his birthday a few months earlier.
I screamed at the top of my lungs, “MOOOOOOONK! NOOOOOOO!” and I fell to my knees. The next moment, there was blackness.
When I finally opened my eyes, I stared up at the ceiling. The unmistakable incandescence of the light that illuminated that room and the sanitized smell made me realize that I was in a hospital.
My body was so weak; it was an effort just for me to turn my head to the side to look at the IV that was attached to my arm. My eyes followed the tube from my arm to the bag that was hanging on a hook, dripping liquid. I tried to remember how I’d gotten there and all of a sudden, memories of Monk’s body lying in that street came flashing back to my mind. I broke down crying as I faintly sat up and attempted to snatch the tubes out of my arms.
Just then, a short pale-faced doctor with a clipboard appeared inside the doorway and tried to calm me down as he approached the bed.
“Miss, Miss, please calm down,” he stated as he grabbed my arms and tried to restrain me. “Nurse! Nurse!” he yelled out and then I saw a heavyset black female nurse enter the room and approach the bed as well.
“It’s okay, darling. It’s okay to let it out, but you don’t wanna hurt yourself,” she stated in a comforting tone as she gently grabbed my wrists and held on while I weakly struggled to break free from her grasp.
“My brother! My brother! They killed my brother!” I sobbed as what little strength I had was starting to fade. My struggles got weaker and weaker until my head hit the pillow and I couldn’t raise it again. Tears stung my eyes and my lips were so dry it felt like they were cracking.
“Miss, you must try to stay calm. You were very dehydrated when the paramedics brought you in. You are not in a healthy state right now and that is very dangerous for the baby,” the doctor stated with a calm, professional voice.
I thought I’d just heard him say, “Baby,” so I slowly turned my head towards him and asked with a weak, cracking voice, “Baby?”
“Yes, you were unconscious when you were brought in so we ran a few tests and one of them revealed that you are a few weeks pregnant. Your iron is at a very...”
His lips were still moving but after the word “pregnant” had left his mouth everything else sounded like I was under twenty feet of water because once again, I faded to black.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE JUSTICE
Ninety Days Later… It had been ninety days since my visit to the hospital and I was finally back in Chicago, staying in the Palmer Hotel, downtown on Michigan Avenue. I’d put down a deposit on a residence that’s on the ground floor of a large turn-of-the-century home in the Southeast section of Hinsdale, which had been transformed into a series of quaint condos. I was still awaiting a call back from management with a move-in date. That damn hotel was getting to be expensive as hell.
Once I’d gotten back in town I looked up my favorite aunt, my only aunt with any business sense, and we were in discussions about some business ventures. I was trying to invest some of the money I had into real estate and I also wanted to start some kind of business. Whatever we decided, I made sure that I would have total control of all decisions. I decided that it was time for a sistah to own something I could finally call mine!
Along with the money and jewelry I took from J.T., I also had the money Monk had taken from Ali. After I’d identified Monk’s body, I was also able to get D.C.’s car because it had been confirmed that I was Monk’s next of kin. I ended up finding the money in the trunk of the Cutlass along with his clothes and jewelry. All of that blood money I arrived in Chicago with had tallied up to more than a quarter of a million dollars, most of which had come from J.T.’s safe. I had the jewelry stashed away just in case I’d run into hard times, then the pawn shops and local dope boys would become my consumers.
Per my request, Monk’s body was cremated. He had always told me that if he was to die before me, he wanted me to keep his ashes. That thought made me look over at the urn, which was placed on the coffee table in the living room area of the suite I was occupying.
As I reminisced back to that fateful day my brother was taken away from me, I wondered if it was God’s way of making me pay for committing the ultimate sin. Maybe it was just his way of showing me that this world is all about the concept of a life for a life. Speaking of life, the one that was growing inside me was aborted the week after I’d returned home. There was no way I could bring a child into this crazy ass world. Without a doubt, I loved kids but I was in no hurry to give birth to one. Besides, I would have never been able to live with myself knowing that I had killed its father in cold blood.
I knew the baby had to have been J.T.’s because he was the only one I’d screwed during that time period. And although we had used condoms except for that last time, I was more than positive that it had to have happened the night the condom had broken, just before I had found out about him and trifling ass Joy.
As for my brother’s killer? No suspects had been named, but I knew who did it. If that bitch Tan didn’t do it, she definitely knew who was responsible. My brother’s throat had been sliced open like a gutted pig and his face had been carved like a piece of wood! Those wounds would be etched into my memory for eternity. I hadn’t forgotten where that bitch’s house was located, and I had vowed that once I was situated she would be dealt with. It was crazy how everything in life always seemed to come full circle. Monk had escaped death in Charlotte only to get to Rock Hill and run straight into it.
I sighed as I got up from the bed where I’d been laying for the last thirty minutes. I walked over to the window and pulled the curtains back to look out over Michigan Avenue. The wind was blowing like crazy and everywhere I looked I saw people hovered over, trying to duck the hawk. While looking out, I thought about the phone call I received an hour earlier from my estranged father, Tyson. I hadn’t seen him since my mother’s funeral years earlier, and that had only been for a brief period.
My aunt had told him what had happened to Monk and she had given him my number. His trifling ass didn’t even know his own son was dead. How fucked up is that? I thought that maybe if he had been in our lives things may have turned out much differently, but he wasn’t there. Never had been. I was waiting on him to come over so we could talk; I wanted to hear his pathetic excuse for running out on me and Monk.
I walked back over to the bed to peruse the Harold’s Chicken menu. Earlier on my way back from the mall I had picked it up so I could order some delivery. I wished Monk was there because that was his favorite chicken spot. As soon as I picked up the phone someone knocked at the door.
“Yes?” I yelled from the bedroom area.
“Justice? It’s me, Tyson.”
I heard my father’s muffled voice on the other side of the door and
I hesitated a minute before answering. Although I was heated with him I still had to acknowledge the fact that he was my father and I was his daughter.
I slowly got up from the bed, walked over to the door, and peeped through the peephole. I saw Tyson standing there looking the exact same as he did the last time I had seen him with his cleanly shaven head and those thick eyelashes.
Once the door was opened I stepped aside and allowed him to enter. He still wore the fragrance I remembered from when I was a child, and for a brief moment I became that little girl back when everything was fine; when Tyson and my mother were still together. Before his cheating and all of their fighting. Back when life was so simple.
Tyson took a good look at me and produced a weak smile. “Hey Lil’ Chyna. An old man can’t get a hug?”
He called me the name he used to call me when I was younger, Lil’
Chyna, and he held his arms wide for an embrace. He used to do the same thing everyday he came home from work, and I used to run into his big, strong arms and knew I would be safe from the world. But now, times were different.
“You don’t deserve a hug, Tyson. Where were those hugs when I graduated high school? When I got my first job? When your wife died?”
I let a few tears fall, and then looked over at Monk’s ashes. “Where were the hugs when your son got killed?” I walked over to where he stood and looked him eye to eye.
“You still think you deserve that hug?” My eyes were soaked with tears as we stared each other down, trying to see who’d be the first to break eye contact. Tyson lost the battle and looked away.
“I guess I deserved that tongue lashing,” he said as he slowly walked over to the sofa and took a seat.
I looked at my father and noticed how much Monk resembled him and it brought back painful memories.
“Tyson, why did you call? Why did you even come here? What’s the real reason?” I asked as I took a seat opposite from him, staring into his eyes to see if he felt any kind of remorse for abandoning me.
“I…I really need to talk to you. I need you to know the reason why your mother and I had our differences,” he stated while nervously fidgeting his hands.
I yelled at him, “Differences? Every couple has differences! That’s no excuse for running out on your family!”
“I didn’t run out, Justice. Kim put me out.”
He spoke about my mother.
“What!? I don’t believe that. That’s low! Lying on a dead woman!” I stated defiantly as I crossed my arms across my chest. My tongue ring began clacking.
“It’s true. She found out that I’d had an affair once,” Tyson weakly explained.
“So you have an affair and she puts you out? If I recall correctly, you had more than one affair,” I remarked sarcastically.
“This affair was different because it produced a child.” With this revelation Tyson got up and walked over to the window where I’d been standing minutes earlier.
“Fuck you mean it produced a child?”
That was the first time my father ever heard me curse. He snapped his head away from the window and looked at me with a defeated look in his eyes. He began pacing back and forth near the window with his head down and arms behind his back as if he was deep in thought. I followed his movements with my eyes and wondered what the hell he was talking about.
A child? Hell to the nah! That meant I had a brother or sister out there that I had never met before!
“I had an affair when your mother and I had first gotten married. Right around the time she was pregnant with you, I had another woman pr
egnant also.” I saw tears welling up in Tyson’s eyes as he stopped pacing the floor and looked at me, searching my features for a reaction.
“You had another woman pregnant the same time mommy was pregnant with me? Damn, that’s trifling. I see why she put you out,” I said while shaking my head at the thought of how my mother probably had felt when all of this was going on.
“That’s not when she put me out, Justice.”
“Well, what happened?”
“I used to travel from state to state on business a lot and in one state, it just…it was something that just happened.” Tears cascaded down his ebony cheeks.
All of this news had me in a state of disbelief as I sat there and tried to digest what my father was telling me. If what he was saying was true then I wanted to contact my long-lost sibling. But since Tyson never kept in touch with me and Monk I wondered if he kept in touch with his other child.
I asked, “Do you keep in touch with your other child?”
“No, because after your mother forgave me, I was hoping they’d just disappear. But the woman popped back up again around the time Monk was born and started pressing me for child support. Your mother thought I was still seeing the woman, but I swear to you, I wasn’t. Your mother wouldn’t hear anything I had to say and that’s when she put me out.”
Looking over at my father I saw the truth in his eyes. My mind traveled at light speed as confusion set in.
“But…but why didn’t you ever come to see us? You could’ve at least came around every once in a while,” I stated defensively.
Tyson looked distraught when he answered.
“I tried, but Kim wasn’t having it. She even lied to the cops and got a restraining order against me. Do you remember seeing me at your school on your lunch breaks?”
I thought back to those days and remembered when Tyson used to show up at my school drunk. I used to be so embarrassed at times that I would not even acknowledge him. If what Tyson said was the truth, then that meant my mother was really the one to blame for his not being in my life.