When It All Falls Down 3 - Somebody is Gonna Die: A Chicago Hood Drama (A Hustler's Lady)

by Tamicka Higgins

  “Naw,” Tramar said, turning back to the house. “I was just asking. Shit, I’m ready. Let’s get this shit done.”

  Tramar and Jackson stepped out of the car. The night was so quiet that they could hear the soles of their shoes making contact with the street’s black pavement. The noise of the city – traffic, gunshots, trains, and police sirens – roared in the distance, from all directions. Moving almost silently, and stepping in unison, the two men made their way across the street. As they stepped into the front yard, they remembered what they’d talked about on their way down into the city from Byron’s suburban house. Tramar simply wanted everything to stay coo.

  Tramar, with his gun tucked in his jacket pocket, walked up to the door. Jackson crouched down at the side of the house, ready to jump and take the opportunity should a nice old lady not answer the door.

  Tramar knocked on the door. He heard the talking and clapping noise inside stop as question were hurled into the air over who it could be knocking at the door. Tramar knocked again, this time looking down at Jackson. “They comin’ to the door,” he said.

  Before the door even began to open, a man asked who was standing out on the porch.

  “Your neighbor?” Tramar said. “It’s the dude who live next door, dude. You know me, Byron. There’s a problem.”

  Jackson wanted to snicker at how Tramar pretended to be a neighbor who was under the impression that Byron was in the house. Quickly, the front door opened and Tramar stood across from a tall, somewhat built but still rather thin dude. In the flash of a second, Tramar had raised his gun to head level and stepped over the threshold. His bold move caused Juan to step back, his hands in the air as his boy was covered in sweat from the smashing he’d just been giving Lexi on the couch.

  Jackson rushed in behind Tramar and went right, causing Knight and the two naked girls to jump up. The girls covered their chests and they ran to opposite corners of the room. Curse words flew about the living room like stray bullets. Jackson quickly pushed the door closed.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Tramar demanded.

  “Yo, nigga, who the fuck is you?” Juan asked. He then realized he’d just asked a very dumb question. He looked at the two dudes, who both had guns pointed at him and his company. “Y’all them two niggas that Byron is lookin’ for, ain’t you?” he asked. “Hey, Knight. This is Tramar and Jackson, nigga, them two niggas Byron lookin’ for.”

  Tramar kept a cool head, wanting to keep control of the situation. He stepped closer to Juan. “Where the fuck is my family?” he asked. Tramar then turned and looked at the living room furniture. “Jackson,” he said, keeping the gun on Juan, “look at this furniture.”

  Jackson remained calm as well as he looked around. When he looked back to Tramar, his eyes were wide. “Nigga, they here,” he said. “They here in this house.”

  “Where they at?” Tramar asked, looking at Juan. Something told him, by the look in Juan’s face compared to that of this other guy, Knight, that Juan was the ringleader. Knight didn’t look all that smart and Tramar was just meeting him. “Where the fuck is my daddy and stepmother?”

  Juan smiled. “Nigga, we don’t know where them niggas is,” he said. “Fuck you, nigga. You know that when Byron catch up with your ass, ain’t no tellin’ what he gon’ do. You just diggin’ a bigger hole for yourself.”

  “Daddy!” Tramar announced. “Vivica! Are y’all here.”

  “Yes, baby!” Tramar could hear his stepmother’s voice announce. “We in here, Tramar! We in here! The bedroom!”

  It was like music to Tramar’s ears to hear his stepmother’s voice again. Hearing her voice meant that his dad’s voice was not too far away. Tramar looked over at Jackson, who was holding down his side of the room. “Jackson?” he said. “You think you can hold all these niggas in place while I go back there? We don’t know what kind shit they might have around here, tucked away and shit.”

  Jackson nodded. “Exactly what I was thinkin’,” he said, in response. “If either of these niggas move, I’mma put a bullet in them. I’m sick of this shit.”

  Tramar ordered Juan to go over to the other side of the room with Knight and the two women. Juan stood next to the naked women and Knight, who was also naked. His fists were balled tight. The idea of being held against his will, especially with his small manhood on display, just didn’t sit all that well with him.

  Tramar made his way through the dining room, going around the table. After he looked into the kitchen and saw that nothing was there, he made his way to the small hallway to the right of the dining room. There, he looked to the right and saw a door with a lock on it. He quickly rushed to the door and tried to open it, but it was dead bolted.

  “What the fuck?” Tramar yelled.

  “Son?” Frank asked. “Tramar?”

  “Tramar!” Vivica yelled. “There’s a key out there I think they use. There’s a key!”

  Quickly, Tramar looked around and noticed the small table flush against the wall in the hallway. Feeling around in the dimly lit area, the tips of his fingers ran across some keys. He picked them up, fumbled with key after key until he found one that would work in the lock. Upon pushing the bedroom door open, Tramar wanted to break down in tears. His father’s swollen face and the look of sheer terror in Vivica’s eyes each said a thousand words all by themselves. Rage, once again, pumped through Tramar’s veins.

  “Come on, y’all,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Let’s just hurry up and get outta here, okay?”

  “What is going on, Tramar?” Frank demanded to know. “And they got our clothes out there or something.”

  “Yeah,” Tramar said, noting how they were both wrapped in bed sheets, in a bedroom that was thirty years behind time.

  Tramar turned around and noticed that there was a second bedroom at the other end of the hallway. In the much smaller room, he saw bundles of clothing on the floor. Upon looking closer at them, he knew they belonged to Frank and Vivica. He swooped them up off of the floor and took them to the bedroom. While his father and stepmother got dressed as quickly as they could, Tramar went back out into the dining room. Seconds later, he stood behind Juan. He breathed heavily as he raised his gun up to the back of Juan’s head.

  Jackson shook his head. “What you doin’, man?” he asked, making sure to keep his gun pointed at Knight and the girls. “Nigga, what you doin’?”

  “Shut up real quick, Jackson,” Tramar said. “Okay, which one of y’all niggas did that to my daddy? Tell me. Which one of y’all niggas did that to my daddy?”

  Juan and Knight stood quietly. Neither of them wanted to answer because they’d both taken part in the brutal beating. However, they both felt the man deserved it for hitting them over the head with the dining room chair.

  Frank walked out into the dining room. “Tramar, don’t,” he said, his voice almost thunderous. He couldn’t stand to see his son holding a gun up to the back of another man’s head. He already felt that the gun violence plaguing Chicago was too much to bear to see on the news. There was no way in hell that he could watch his son do that. Frank was still trying to process what he and his wife had seen on the news. They wanted so desperately to believe that the man who robbed the bank where the security guard had been shot and killed was not the same suspect as Tramar.

  “Daddy, not right now,” Tramar said, his arm shaking. “I’mma kill whichever one of these niggas did that shit to you. Just tell me which one and the sooner that we all gon’ get out of here.”

  Frank looked into his wife’s eyes for a moment. They knew, after years of marriage, what the other one was thinking. Vivica shook her head slightly before Frank said, “It wasn’t neither of them. It was the leader nigga, not one of these sorry motherfuckers. Tramar, I’m telling you boy. It wasn’t them, it was the other one.”

  Tramar groaned under his breath. The very thought of Byron not only kidnapping his family, but also beating his father’s face so brutally made him really want to take somebody’s life.r />
  “Okay,” Tramar said, calming down. He’d decided to spare the two sidekicks’ lives tonight. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there really was no need to kill either of them. However, there was no debating whether or not he’d get Byron. Byron was a dead man walking – he just didn’t know it yet. “Daddy, Vivica, go outside and wait in the car while we do something with these niggas.”

  “Tramar, you heard your father,” Vivica said. “Don’t kill them, Tramar.”

  “I’m not, Vivica,” Tramar said. “I’m not gon’ kill. We just gotta do something with them. I’ll explain later. We just gotta do something with them is all. I can’t just leave them here with they phones and shit so they can make the situation even worse. Just go on outside and get in the car and wait. Jackson,” he looked at his best friend, “I can hold them here while you walk them out to your car since they prolly don’t know what it look like.”

  “You sure?” Jackson asked. In his mind, Tramar had asked him to do that favor so he could be alone in the house. Jackson, too, didn’t want to see his friend add any more unnecessary murder charges. The bank was enough.

  “Yeah, let’s just get this over with,” Tramar said. “Once you come back in, we gon’ figure out what to do with these niggas and the girls and stuff, and we gon’ hurry up and get outta here.”

  Frank and Vivica rushed around the dining room table and across the living room. Jackson guided them out of the door and to his car.

  “Nigga, you know Byron is gon’ catch you,” Juan said, snickering.

  Tramar looked at Juan, seeing that he was the brave one of the bunch. The other three – Knight and the two women – looked as if they were smart enough to know better than to say anything. They stood on the other side of the living room, naked, and in a deep state of confusion.

  “Nigga, shut the fuck up,” Tramar said, pushing the tip of the barrel of the gun into the back of Juan’s head. “Fuck that nigga Byron. Fuck him.”

  Tramar looked over at Knight. “Hey, Little Dick,” he said.

  Knight realized that he was who Tramar was referring to. Hesitantly, he spoke up, knowing that if he said nothing he could possibly have the gun pointed at the back of his head. “Huh?”

  “Tell your buddy hear to shut the fuck up,” Tramar told him, pointing the gun at him briefly.

  The girls squealed, one of them saying, “This nigga is fuckin’ crazy.”

  Knight, stammering, looked at Juan. “Man, just be quiet,” he said, his face pleading. “This nigga is crazy as fuck, nigga. Just be quiet.”

  “You shut your little dick ass up, nigga,” Juan said. “You and me both know that the second he leaves this house, Byron is gon’ have every nigga in Chicago lookin’ for this dude. You over there gettin’ scared and shit, probably cause you done finally got some pussy that ain’t ran out on your little dick ass.”

  Tramar slammed his gun into the back of Juan’s head. “Nigga, I told you to shut the fuck up,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”

  Juan winced at the pain as the back of his head had already begun to throb. He grabbed his head. Jackson came storming back into the house, breathing heavily as he stepped into the living room. “Okay,” he said. “I’m back.” He pushed the front door closed. “What you think we should do?”

  Smiling, Tramar looked around, looking for ideas. “I wonder if these niggas got some tape or rope in this house,” he said. “Ain’t that nigga say that Byron’s bitch ass grandma used to live here? You know how old ladies is. They always got the shit you need in case something happens.”

  Tramar thought a little more about it. “Look, you hold them here and I’mma go look around,” he said. “Shit, if we got to, we can use sheets and shit, like the ones that my daddy and stepmother been in for the last couple days.”

  Jackson pulled his gun up and kept control of the living room while Tramar went into the kitchen. He looked around in the drawers, but had no luck. He stepped out onto the back porch and looked around on the shelves above the washer and dryer. Yet again, he was not finding much of anything he could use. Tramar then flipped on the basement light and headed downstairs. At the bottom, there were utility-like cabinets built into the wall. Tramar yanked one open and looked around. He smiled when he found two rolls of utility tape. “This’ll work,” he said to himself. “Nice and strong.”

  Tramar headed back upstairs and held the tape up at Jackson. He smiled. “Right here,” he said.

  Jackson nodded. “Okay,” he said. “So, what you gon’ tie them up to, though?”

  Tramar looked around, taking note of the dining room table. He smiled and grabbed Juan by the arm, holding the gun to the side of his head. “Sit down in this fuckin’ chair,” he commanded. “Try to do some stupid shit and a goddamn bullet is going in your head, got that?”

  Juan nodded, feeling a little woozy from being hit in the back of the head. He sat down into the chair as he was told and remained still while Tramar wrapped his wrists against the arms of the chair. He then did his calves, wrapping them to the legs of the chair. Once he finished with that, remembering that there was plenty of tape, he wrapped tape around the back of the chair so it would hold Juan’s neck and head in place, straight up and facing ahead. Now, Juan was sitting upright in a dining room chair. He shook his head. “Byron is gon’ fuck you up, nigga,” he said. “You just don’t know.”

  Tramar snickered before slamming the butt of his gun into Juan’s head. Juan was nearly knocked out from the blow. If it had not been for the tape holding his head in place, his head would have probably slumped over to the side.

  Tramar then did the same with Knight, tying him thoroughly to a dining room chair. He used more on him as he was bigger and probably stronger. Once he and Juan were tied to two different chairs, and facing one another head on, Tramar stepped into the living room and stood next to Jackson. “Now,” he said. “What are we gonna do with the bitches?”

  Jackson nodded. “We should let’em go,” he said, “but you know we can’t. You know they gon’ run and talk.”

  “I promise we won’t,” one girl pleaded.

  “Yeah,” the other said. “Just let us go, niggas, and I swear we won’t say a thing.”

  “I will suck your dick,” the first girl said. “I’ll suck both your dicks if you just let us go.”

  “I knew them bitches was hoes,” Knight said, shaking his head.

  Tramar looked into the dining room. “Little Dick,” he said. “Be quiet.”

  Knight saw the gun pointed at him and shut his mouth. Tramar went back to looking at the girls. He then looked at Juan and Knight and how they’d interrupted their fun time of getting some pussy. That thought sparked an idea with Tramar.

  “Sorry, ladies,” Tramar said. “But I don’t let hoes suck on my dick. Come over here.”

  The two ladies came over to Jackson and Tramar. Tramar took one and told her to lean over and wrap her arms around the banister in the wall that separated the dining room from the living room, a design that made it look as if there were windows looking into the dining room. Both Lexi and Antonia did as they were told. Once the girls had leaned over and wrapped their hands around the banisters, Tramar wrapped their wrists and hands together so tight that they could not move them. When he stepped away, he slapped one’s ass then the other’s. They both moved frantically, still naked, as they tried to understand what was going on.

  “You can’t just leave us like this,” Lexi said. “I swear, we ain’t have nothin’ to do with this. We was just over here chillin’ and stuff. We don’t even know them like that.”

  “I believe you,” Tramar said, “and that’s why I ain’t kill you or nothin’. Don’t worry. Whenever that nigga Byron come over here or whatever and find you, he’ll let you go.”

  “Fuck,” Knight said, in an almost whining voice. “Man, Byron is gon’ kill us. That nigga gon’ beat our asses so bad when he find us like this.”

  “Shut up Little Dick,” Tramar said. “Stop all t
hat cryin’ and shit you over there doin’. Shut the fuck up.”

  “Aye, nigga,” Juan said, looking across at Knight.

  Tramar had begun to head toward the front door when he decided that he’d arrange them a little better. This was when he turned around, stepped back into the dining room, and moved both Knight and Juan so that they were staring at the very asses they’d been inside of just minutes ago. He laughed, slapping Knight on his head as he walked out of the house. Jackson closed the door behind them.

  “Fuck, nigga,” Juan said. “How the fuck you let this shit happen?”

  “Me?” Knight said. “You was the one facing the damn door and went and opened it and let them niggas in here.”

  “Nigga, I only got up ‘cause your ass was over there lost in your little dick world, moaning like a little bitch and shit,” Juan said.

  “Now these niggas gon’ start arguing when we need to figure out a way to get outta this fuckin’ house,” Antonia.

  “What the fuck this hoe think we gon’ do?” Juan said. “We tied up.”

  “Man, when Byron find us, he gon’ beat our fuckin’ asses if he don’t just kill us,” Knight said.

  Everybody in the room hyperventilated. “This little dick nigga,” Juan’s girl, who was on his side of the room, said, shaking her head.

  Antonia looked over her shoulder. “At least you ain’t have to let him hit and shit,” she said. “Girl, I ain’t feel nothin’. I was over there fakin’ that shit like a mug. He was cute with how he came with it, though.”

  ***

  Byron reached over Rene’s head to flick the ashes off the end of his blunt. Once he’d made contact with the ashtray on the bedside table, he pulled the blunt back up to his mouth and hit it again. There, in his dimly lit bedroom, he lay in this middle of his California King bed. With Rene’s plump body sprawled out to his left, and Cynthia on his right, he looked back and forth as he tried to decide which one’s ass was fatter. He’d just had a crazy threesome where they both competed like champions to see who would be the keeper. Byron chuckled as he leaned his head back, trying to figure out how he was going to decide.