by Nikki Turner
To the best of her knowledge, it had been about two hours since Flashlight and his partner were last in the room. She couldn’t be sure, because she didn’t have a watch, and of course she didn’t have a phone.
After praying, Tallhya used the time trying to utilize meditation techniques she’d learned from a psychologist while in the crazy hospital. It was useless. Each method required her to do two things: (1) Take deep breaths and (2) Clear her mind completely of all thoughts.
The first one was easy enough, but she didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of clearing her mind. She was way too nervous for that shit, and there was no logical grounds to relax and clear her mind.
The small room was pin-drop quiet. For some reason, Tallhya’s mind kept going back to when she was in that seedy hotel after the bank robbery. She was destitute of not only money, but of hope as well. She’d spent the few pennies she’d gotten from the robbery on the hotel room and food. She wasn’t sure if the bank’s cameras had captured a good image of her and if the police were hot on her trail. She’d only had six minutes on her prepaid phone, and with nowhere else to turn, Tallhya had cried out to God. Lo and behold, He had not only showed up, but He showed out! In what seemed like the blink of an eye, God had changed her life significantly.
Tallhya kept reminding herself that this was no different. If He thought that she was worth saving then, why would God allow her to be thrown to the wolves now?
Deep in thought, Tallhya began hearing voices. Was she hallucinating? What were audible hallucinations without images called? Crazy. Was God trying to speak to her, or was her mind playing tricks on her?
Turned out that it was neither. The voices manifested from the devils outside the room where their captive was tied up. Prince (AKA Flashlight), and his partner Abe (AKA Mean-Mug), weighed their options.
Sitting on a ratty sofa, Prince expressed his concerns. “I don’t think it’s the right move, trying to shake that nigga Wolfe down.”
Prince and Abe had been friends since the sandbox and had always been tighter than fish pussy. They were like peanut butter and jelly, different but complimenting each other.
Abe wholeheartedly disagreed with his homeboy’s rationality. “Fuck Wolfe! He not exempt from the game.” Abe, sitting across from Prince in a mismatched corduroy recliner, was adamant. “It’s ’bout time somebody man up and get at dude. Shiiiit!” he exclaimed. “Might as well be us.”
Prince shook his head. He’d heard wicked stories about Wolfe—each more treacherous than the next. The man was not only vicious, but he was also relentless. Prince once heard that Wolfe waited a whole year to murk a dude who’d dinged the door of his new Bentley parked in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Wolfe investigated the indiscretion for months. He wrote down the plate number of every car parked in his section of the lot and questioned them all. When Wolfe finally found out the identity of the perpetrator, dude was serving a six-month skid bid in Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center for driving without a license. When he got out, Wolfe gave the careless asshole the opportunity to pay what it had cost to get the ding out. He’d even saved the receipt. Dude made a fatal mistake of thinking Wolfe’s request was optional.
“Wolfe isn’t going to let no shit like that go without serious repercussions and consequences. You know that’s right.” Prince made sure his buddy understood what they were agreeing on.
“Like I said,” Abe spit, “fuck that one-legged, cripple-ass nigga! You scared of a gimp? Just say you scared, bro,” Abe teased. “A scared-ass nigga is what I ain’t ever known you to be. Guess this some new shit you on.”
“It’s not about being scared,” Prince said. He set the empty beer can down on the floor. ”This chick was supposed to be a quick lick until we got all the details down on the armored truck heist. Get us enough cash to hold us over.”
“Never count unhatched eggs,” Abe sagely said. “That armored truck play is set to go in motion in a few weeks. This shit here . . .” he said, “is here and now. I’m not passing up on nooooo fucking bread, bro. This is how we play it. We call the sister back and tell her to tell Wolfe to cough up the hundred fifty K or we kill Tallhya. And after we kill her, then we gon’ find his bitch and make him pay to get her back, too.”
“Man, that’s real ambitious, and I like your ambition,” he told his buddy. “But the last thing we need is to be going to war with Wolfe!” Prince fully understood the dangers of fucking with a nigga like Wolfe, but all Abe saw was money signs. He felt that their team was invincible.
“Once we take the armored truck out, we’ll have enough bread to go to war with whoever.” Abe was sure about that. “Bet that, my nigga.”
“That’s not the point,” said Prince, speaking with plenty of logic.
“Money is the point, my man. Always has been and always will be. Anything else is pointless. So let’s just focus on the grind: one bitch, one truck, one lick at a time.”
Prince chuckled. “Speaking of bitches,” he said, “here comes yours.”
“Heyyyyy, boo. I called your phone. Why you ain’t answer?”
“Busy.” Abe looked annoyed. “And didn’t I tell you not to come over here unannounced?”
“What was I supposed to do?” Buffy said. “I needed to speak with you, and when I called, you didn’t answer.”
Abe was blunt. “What da fuck you want?”
Buffy shouted, “I want to kill that bitch!”
“So go ahead and tell the entire fucking neighborhood?” a twisted-face Abe said.
“I! Want! That! Bitch! Dead!” Buffy screamed, emphasizing each word to get her point across. “And I want her to die a fucking slow, painful death!”
In the other room, Tallhya could hear everything and recognized Buffy’s whiny voice. Her heart dropped.
Fuck! Ain’t this a bitch. If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.
She didn’t like the way this was going. When she first heard Buffy’s voice, her heart dropped. Now it was racing 90 miles per hour.
“I want that bitch dead!” she heard Buffy scream.
Fuck, the feeling is mutual. She tried to be optimistic. They won’t kill me as long as they think they can get paid. However, optimism was hard to maintain when one’s survival hung in the hands of a bitch one just stomped out. After they got the money, what would keep them from killing her then? Her existence would no longer hold any value for them. In fact, it would be the opposite; she would be a liability.
Before she knew it, Tallhya began to hyperventilate. Tears and sweat rolled down her cheeks. Then she heard a voice in her head. This time it really did emanate from inside of her.
You got God!
The three simple words calmed her down.
You got God!
Then she heard Me-Ma’s voice. “And with Him, who can be against you?”
Then came Bunny’s voice. “Bitch, if you don’t drag that motherfucking bitch again and beat the living shit and fucking daylights out of her when you get out of here! Teach her about fucking with us Banks sisters!”
Next was Ginger’s voice. “Biiiiiitch, you never crack under pressure! If you don’t get your game face on! Focus on getting out of here in one piece and getting skinny motherfucking skinny and fly and stunt on all these motherfuckers.”
Then lastly, she could hear typical Deidra in her head. “I know good and well you ain’t stunting these motherfuckers. Focus on that money—play your role and figure out how to get their plans on that armored truck. Fuck everything! Fuck your feelings! Focus on that money!”
“Calm the fuck down,” Abe said.
“Calm down? Look at my motherfucking face.” Buffy turned so that Abe could get a better angle. She turned the volume down on her voice a few notches, but she was clearly still angry. “That bitch fucked my face up completely.”
Abe had to agree.
“Yeah, your face is fucked up.” Her face was red and blue and swollen.
Prince said, “Day-um!” and turn
ed away. “Bitch got a mean hook. Remind me of my sister!”
Buffy ignored Prince and whined to Abe, “I had to get stitches and everything . . . .” She was laying it on thick.
Tallhya thought, Good for that bitch! A permanent scar! Bitch is going to always remember me and my sister, even if I’m dead! Mission accomplished.
“I want y’all to handle that bitch,” Buffy said. “I want her dead. She embarrassed me at my own shit. I want her and her sister Rydah to die! Both of them dead! I hate them bitches.”
Prince said, “Ain’t that the same chick you wanted to lick just a few months ago? Now you want her dead because her sister retaliated on some shit you instigated and lined up?”
Abe left the emotions out of the equation. Once the emotions were gone, all that was left was the money. He said, “Miss me with that shit, Buffy. She’s worth way more to me alive than dead, any day of the week. Matter of fact, I’ma hit you up later. Just go on home, lay low, and let your mug heal,” he suggested. “Instead of running ’round these streets all destructive and shit.”
“Go home and do what?” she questioned.
“For once,” Abe said, “just do what I tell you to do. Go home. Stay off the phones and social media. Don’t let nobody know shit. Just keep your mouth shut. Do everybody that justice, please.”
“A’ight.” Buffy acquiesced. Then she said, “Are you going to pick up when I call you?”
“Stop fucking playing with me, Buffy, and do what I say to do, a’ight?”
It seemed like hours, but it was only a few beats of silence. For a second, Tallhya thought that they were going to come into the room. Then she heard a door slam. Hard.
“That bitch is bad news, man . . . bad fucking news!” a disgusted Prince said to Abe. “She gon’ get you killed before it’s all over with. And me too, if I ain’t careful. Shit!”
“At the end of the day, Buffy be ’bout that paper,” Abe said. “How many of them fake, flossing-ass niggas has she lined up for us?” Abe asked. “A boat load. That’s how many. A fucking boat load. More than you can remember. That’s how many. As long as she keeps food on our plates, she’s all right with me. So be grateful.”
“For sure,” Prince said. “She’s come through in the past, but everything gets old sooner or later. I’m just saying that the bitch may have run her course. Bit by bit, you sacrificing pieces of your swag and your good sense fucking with this chick. You put too much faith in her. A snake is a friend to no one. It’s only a snake. Just because it doesn’t bite you right away doesn’t mean that it never will.”
“I have to admit,” Abe said with a nod, “she is a heartless bitch. That’s her best quality, though.”
That was the first thing the two lifelong friends had agreed on all day
All Tallhya wanted right now was to be released and get out of there, get her surgery, heal, and start living the life that she should have been living a long time ago.
As time turtled by, Tallhya continued to lie on the pissy mattress, exercising patience and faith, and somehow tuning that smell out.
Suddenly, Abe walked in. Before she could sit up, he grabbed her by the hair with one hand and punched her in the face with the other. He hit her so hard she went out.
“That’s for giving my bitch a black eye on her birthday.” When she woke up, he wrapped his hands around her neck, choking her. That was all she remembered before blacking out again.
* * *
“Miss?”
Someone was trying to get her attention.
“Miss?”
When she came to, Tallhya only had vision in one eye. The other was covered with some type of bandage. She could barely see out of the one that wasn’t covered. Everything was blurry. People were standing over her, but she couldn’t make out much of anything else. A few beats later, she realized that the people standing over her were paramedics.
Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
Tallhya heard a lady with a high-pitched Spanish accent speaking to someone as the medics strapped her onto a stretcher.
Someone said, “They dumped her from a green van. I thought she was dead.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Do you mind coming downtown to give a statement and look at a few photos?”
“I’m kind of busy.”
“It wont take long”
“Well . . .” the Spanish lady reluctantly said, “okay. But I only have a minute.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A paramedic with red hair asked, “Does she have a pulse?”
There were two fingers on her wrist.
“It’s weak, but she has one!” He wore his hair in dreads.
Red Head said, “Thank God, ma’am, that you called when you did.”
Tallhya could feel the gurney being lifted into the back of the ambulance. She felt sick to her stomach.
Speaking into the radio, one paramedic said, “We have a black woman in her late twenties, early thirties, possible heroin OD.”
OD?
Other than the drugs administered to her at the mental hospital, Tallhya had never abused a drug in her life.
“No track marks,” said Red Head.
“Probably a recreational user.”
Tallhya tried to respond, but her body wouldn’t cooperate.
“Vitals low.”
“Oh, shit!”
“What?”
“Her heartbeat’s dropping rapidly. She may not make it.”
Chapter 21
Lunch Money
Rydah had wired the $150,000 to the bank account the abductors had specified. Wolfe came through with the cash like it was lunch money. He didn’t want to give in to suckers trying to shake him down, but he felt bad for Rydah that these fools were holding Tallhya, doing who knows what to her.
Rydah felt horrible. God forbid if Tallhya didn’t live. She would never forgive herself. She kept running everything through her head from the day of Tallhya’s disappearance.
Wolfe took the phone away from his ear and said to Rydah, “Stop beating yourself up, babe!” He’d been on the phone with everybody he trusted, trying to find out how this had happened. Right now he was talking to a guy named Jack Fishy. Jack Fishy was an ex-bail bondsman and ex-bounty hunter turned private investigator. Everyone called him Fishy.
Fishy had a reputation of being able to find anyone, anywhere. People in the street joked that Obama had hired Fishy to find Osama Bin Laden.
“I need your services,” Wolfe said. “Someone snatched my sister-in-law and shook me down for a hundred fifty G.”
Fishy said, “I’m on it. It shouldn’t be hard following a trail of money that large.” Within five minutes, Fishy knew that the money had been transferred through a Bahamian bank. “As you know, peoples who transact a lot of shady money or just wants to duck taxes think of Nassau as a baby Swiss banking system. But it isn’t as sophisticated as people think. I’m on it, Wolfe.”
The street’s lips were tight for the moment, or no one knew anything. And someone always knew something.
Vexed, he hung up the phone. “I promise, baby, when I find out who’s behind this . . . I don’t even want the money back,” he said. “But on everything I love,”—which wasn’t much—“they going to pay dearly.”
Rydah knew better than to say anything to try to stop him. Nor did she want to.
Wolfe saw the anxiety etched in Rydah’s face. “Baby, I promise you everything will be okay.” He took her into his arms. It hurt Wolfe seeing Rydah broken up the way she was. This was the very reason why he hated being in a relationship, because your enemies targeted the things you loved most.
“Why haven’t they called? We paid them what they asked for.”
Rydah had to ask her parents to use their account to wire the money. She didn’t want to tell them, but she didn’t know what else to do.
“They’ll call,” said Wolfe, but in his heart, he knew that it could go either way. They could kill her just as easily as they could release her. I
t was 50/50.
Rydah felt helpless and angry, and she secretly wished that Buffy paid for what had happened. Every time she thought of all the tragic ways she wished Buffy would die, Rydah had to ask God for forgiveness.
The text came from a private number
Unknown: Your sister is on the way to the hospital.
Rydah almost threw up. How bad was she hurt?
Chapter 22
The Lady Lagoon
“Someone probably slipped you a roofie,” the doctor concluded. “You said the last thing you remembered was drinking the water, then waking up in a strange place?”
It had been a few hours since arriving to the hospital, and Tallhya was laying in the bed, trying to take everything in. She still couldn’t believe what had happened, or that she was alive to tell the story.
“Yes.”
“Do you remember being given drugs of any kind?” the young Spanish doctor asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes! Ummm . . . no . . . ummm, I don’t know.” Tallhya searched her brain but couldn’t be sure. “I don’t remember.”
“Was there any kind of intercourse?” he asked.
“No!” A pause. “I don’t think so.”
The doctor patted her on the shoulder. “You are safe now. We will take good care of you.”
Once the doctor left, Rydah said to Tallhya, “Miami isn’t the place for you to be running the streets alone. What the hell were you thinking about? I work late for one night and everything goes to shit.”
Wolfe said, “Let’s just focus on the fact that Tallhya is here with us now.”
“I guess you are right, but I still don’t like what happened to my sister.”
“None of us do. And whoever’s responsible will pay for it.”
Tallhya thanked Wolfe for coming up with the money. “I promise I will pay you back.”
“Don’t mention it,” Wolfe said. “Just keep me out the doghouse with your sister,” he half joked.
“I’ll do the best I can.”