Gate Wide Open

by M. T. Pope

  I was awakened at about ten o’clock at night by a call from James. He was ready to cash in on his favor, and I wasn’t happy at all with what he was asking me to do.

  “Hello,” I said, groggy as hell. Me and Li’l Shawn had eaten and laid down at about nine thirty.

  “I need you to do something for me.” James was vibrant, like he had just got some good loving.

  “Already?” I was still half-asleep. I got up out of the bed and walked into the living room, so I wouldn’t wake up Li’l Shawn.

  “Yes, already, bit”—He stopped short of calling me out of my name. “So strap up yo bootstraps ’cuz you goin’ in.” He laughed.

  “Okay.” I huffed. “What you need me to?”

  “I need you to get some info on someone of interest.”

  “For what?”

  “Bitch, don’t ask me about my business when you and your offspring are living up in my shit for free.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You sure is. I’m starting to wonder if we really family, with your dumb ass, getting pregnant by a nigga you ain’t have no chance in getting. You didn’t know what the hell you was doing, did you?”

  “Uh—”

  “Of course not. You ain’t got nothing to show for it but a kid. No money, nothing. And you want me to help you get some money from Shawn to take care of his kid? You owe me big time, so listen up.”

  I didn’t say anything, because he was right. I just listened to what he asked me to do.

  “I need you to follow this chick around and see what she’s up to. She’s a lesbian, so you might have to do a little licking to get her close to you.”

  “Do what?” I belted out, but quickly covered my mouth.

  “Bitch, you not deaf. You heard me.”

  “I—I—I don’t know if I can do that.” I wasn’t a lesbian. I liked dick very much. I couldn’t see me doing a chick. Even the thought sent shivers down my back.

  “Oh, you will. Or your ass is on the street.”

  “What about Li’l Shawn? Who goin’ to keep him while I’m doin’ this…stuff?”

  I was desperate. I needed help getting Shawn to pay child support illegally, because I wanted more than the state would give me if I went to court.

  “I’ll take him while you doing what you need to do for me and give him back when you’re finished. And don’t think you’re going to try to get me by leaving out of town or some shit and sticking me with him, because you never know when my ass is going to be on your ass. I will drop his ass off at Child Protective Services in a heartbeat and think nothing of it.”

  “James, I would never do that.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  He gave me the info I needed and hung up the phone.

  The only reason I was doing it was because he’d promised me he could get me and him a nice piece of change from Shawn. His ass was crazy, and I knew it, but if anybody could do it, it was James.

  I knew I was going to have to do some stuff that was completely out of character, even for me, but I was doing this for Li’l Shawn.

  Chapter 26

  Keisha

  You Never Know

  December 11th, 2018 11:30 A.M.

  “Oh, excuse me.” I’d accidentally bumped a lady as I pushed my cart down the cereal aisle in the crowded Shopper’s Food Warehouse at Mondawmin Mall.

  “Oh, no problem. This aisle is small as shit anyways,” she said with a slight chuckle, showing her chipped tooth in her mouth. “It’s always like this around the first of the month. Everybody gets their government checks around this time. And the Christmas holiday doesn’t help either. I don’t know why I can’t remember to do my shopping in the middle of the month, like a normal person who works for a living.”

  “Girl, you ain’t say nothing but a word,” I said, pulling off in the direction of the deli. I wasn’t that talkative. I had about thirty seconds of conversation in me before getting bored and walking away.

  I had to hurry up anyway and get home and feed these kids. I was so glad they were old enough to fix their own food, I could dance.

  Li’l Kenny and Jeremy were twelve and fourteen and were spitting images of their faggot-ass father. I still got pissed off every time I thought about Kenny’s dick-lovin’ ass. I was so glad he took the easy way out and took his life in prison. He was a waste of good dick anyway.

  That’s why I let his sister lick the pussy at night when he was on the town with his boys. Antoinette’s ass sure could lick a pussy just right. She had my ass climbing the walls the very first time she fucked me. The best thing about Antoinette was that she wasn’t one of those butch, man-lookalikes. She was as pretty and feminine as any other woman, but she was like a straight-up dude when it came to the bedroom skills. If her ass could have made me pregnant with her tongue, I swear I would have about fifty muthafuckin’ kids right about now. That was just how good she was.

  We didn’t live together for the sake of my kids. I didn’t tell them about their father, and I wasn’t going to let them see their mother sleeping in the same bed hugged up with no woman. She had her own place, and I had mine, and when we wanted to do what we did, we made sure the kids were in school or spending the night over my parents’ house.

  I wasn’t in love with her, but I did care for her greatly. We were supposed to be in a monogamous relationship, but I had this feeling that she was cheating on me. Her patterns were changing, and I noticed that she wasn’t as attentive as she used to be. Her cell phone was switched to voice mail a lot more now, and whenever I did call her, she always had some lame excuse, like she had to baby-sit her sister’s kids, or she wasn’t feeling well and was just going to stay in the house and rest. I was hoping she wasn’t, but all the signs were there. I wasn’t going to have her deceive me like Kenny did.

  I continued to walk around the corner as I went down my grocery list. I turned down the ice cream aisle and bumped into the same lady I’d collided with earlier.

  “So we meet again,” she said with a smile that went way past friendly. “It must be fate that we keep bumping into each other like this.”

  “Yeah. Mm-hmm,” I said, an awkward smile on my face. I wasn’t for this shit today. Nowadays I had women hitting on me just as much as men. I didn’t mind, but today was just too much since I felt that Antoinette might be cheating on me.

  I quickly maneuvered my cart around hers and made a beeline for the checkout lines. As I continued my route, I looked back and noticed the chick still eyeing me down like a Jell-O Pudding Pop. I quickly refocused my attention straight ahead and made my way through the maze of people, trying to find a short line and get the hell out of there.

  I made my way out of the supermarket, trying to get to my car, and damn near ran an old lady over with my cart. I wasn’t in the mood for another chick to be breathing down my neck. I had one I couldn’t control. I definitely didn’t need two.

  I swiftly threw my bags in my car and got in, prepared to pull off and get home as quickly as possible. Just as I was about to pull out, the front of my car was blocked in by another vehicle. To my dismay, it was the lady that was getting fresh with me in the market. I sighed a breath of frustration. I looked at her as she got out of her car and walked over to mine.

  Oh, shit! This bitch is crazy! was my first thought. I put my hands on my keys and grabbed my Mace that was attached to it, just in case this bitch was a mental patient escapee from Spring Grove.

  “I was wondering if I could get your number, so I can call you sometime?”

  I was in awe at the audacity this broad had. She hadn’t known me more than a couple of hot minutes, and she was already trying to get in my panties.

  “Look, today ain’t a good day for all that, so can you back your piece-a-shit of a car up so I can be gone?” I truly didn’t care if I hurt her feelings at all.

  “You’s a fiesty one, ain’t you?” she said with a smile.

  I didn’t see anything funny. I just wanted to get home and get in the bed.

&n
bsp; “How about I give you mine, and you can decide to call me when you’re ready to ride this ride?” She flickered her tongue.

  I snatched the piece of paper with her number on it and watched as she jumped into her beat-up SUV and drove off. I unfolded the paper and looked at it—Sherry 589-4588. I didn’t have any plans to call her, but I stuffed it in my pocketbook anyway, just in case. “You never know,” I said, shrugging my shoulders and driving off.

  Chapter 27

  James

  You Have a Right to Remain Silent

  December 13th, 2018, 2:00 P.M.

  I didn’t think the bitch had it in her. She actually pulled that shit off. When I’d first asked her for the favor, she was like, “I don’t lick no clit.” I wanted to tell her tore-up ass, the way she looked, she should be accepting applications from anybody that would sleep with her, but I held back because she was family. I assured her that it would never get to that point, that I would make this payback as easy and as fast as possible. I needed her to string Keisha along until I had a definite solution of payback. I wanted Keisha to remember me for as long as she lived.

  Right now, I was headed on my way down to the police department because I got a call from a detective saying he needed to talk to me about Carl Black’s murder. I wasn’t in the mood to be questioned. I didn’t have anything to do with it, because I was somewhere else at the time.

  I walked in the precinct. As usual, all eyes were on me as I made my way to the front desk and asked for the detective I was scheduled to see. I was told he would be out to get me shortly.

  Just as I took a seat, my cell phone rang, and it was my baby on the phone. “Hey, Wallace, baby. How are you doing?” I said sweetly into the phone.

  “Everything’s good. I was calling to check on my shortie.”

  The bitch in me was like, Awww, but I kept that part of me inside. “I’m good. I’m out running some errands,” I said, a huge smile on my face.

  Again, I couldn’t believe how attentive this dude was. I was still a little skeptical that his ass still didn’t let any flaws show, but I was watching him closely to see if he had any.

  “I can’t wait to get home and show you how much I love you.” Hearing those words come out of my mouth puzzled even me.

  I noticed someone walking toward me, so I decided to cut our conversation short. I didn’t need him in my business either. I liked my personal shit to be on lock. “Look, baby, I gotta call you back real quick. My momma’s on the other line, and I need to talk to her about some things.”

  “Sure, boo. I’ll see you in a li’l bit.”

  “James Parks?” The burly officer extended his hand out to shake mine.

  I hesitantly shook his hand back because it looked like his fingers were sticky from eating donuts. At least that’s what it looked like, but his ass could have been doing anything in his office, if you know what I mean.

  We walked into his office, and to my surprise this dude had his shit together. He must have been a neat freak or something, because as soon as he entered his office, he began cleaning the doorknobs and chairs, like somebody had contaminated them.

  I took a seat in front of his desk as he made his way to his file cabinet. I looked around the room and noticed a chalkboard with pictures of Carl’s mangled flesh spread out across it. Whoever killed his ass did a number on him because from the look of the pictures, they had torn his lips off and other crazy-ass shit.

  I immediately had flashbacks of the prank phone calls and the reckless driver that tried to take me out on 695. I cringed a little because this muthafucka was after me now, and I hadn’t the foggiest idea who had that much hate toward me.

  The only real person I could think of was Shawn, but could he have that much hate toward his father to do something so heinous to him? I mean, yeah, his father did abuse him as a child and turned on him to get my attention, but this was too far-gone. I just didn’t know. Maybe he could have enough hate in his heart to want to kill his father and me. Nah!

  “Mr. Parks?” the detective called out, waving his hand in front of my face, breaking me out of my trance. “Is everything okay?” he said, a concerned look on his face.

  “Oh, ah, yeah. I’m fine. I was just thinking about some stuff, that’s all.”

  “Do you know why I called you down here?” he said, looking me straight in the eyes.

  He was looking all intense and shit, like he was accusing me of the crime right then and there. He was barking down the wrong tree, and I wasn’t to be fucked with. If I had done that shit, they wouldn’t have found Carl’s old ass, because I would have done some Jeffrey Dahmer type shit and chopped his ass into little pieces.

  “I have a couple of ideas, but I’ma let you tell me,” I said, looking back at him just as intently. He was going to have to come harder than that to get my ass to talk.

  He leaned back in his chair and massaged his chin like he was thinking about his next move. Again, he didn’t know who he was fucking with.

  “Do you know a Carl Black?”

  “Well, he was a friend of mine, and we’d hang out from time to time. Why?”

  “Well, he turned up dead a couple of weeks ago, and we found your fingerprints in his home.” He sat up again like he had caught me red-handed.

  “I have been over his residence from time to time, but it was only for the parties he was giving,” I lied.

  He again sat back in his chair, and this time he scratched his head, fishing for more things to ask.

  “Look, Mr. Parks, let’s stop bullshitting around. You and I both know that you and Carl Black were lovers. I have sufficient proof that includes phone records and other correspondences that back up my claims. You will need a rock-solid alibi to cover your whereabouts on the night of the murder. Otherwise, I’m going to order a warrant for your arrest in the murder of Carl Black.”

  “Fine.” I looked at him and smiled because I had all the evidence I needed in my man-bag. Thank goodness I went to the hospital that night I’d mutilated my ex-boss, because my ass would’ve been up the river with no paddle. I reached into my bag and handed him a copy of my vaccinations for the bites I had on my arms from the cat that tried to take out a chunk of my arm. “Here you go.”

  He eyed down the piece of paper doing a couple of “huh hum’s” and then looked up at me. “Well, this looks to be legit. I will still be calling the hospital to verify this.”

  I looked at him. Whatever, man. I reached down and got my things together to leave. I glanced down momentarily, making sure I didn’t leave anything.

  When I got up, the detective was already up and walking toward his door. I proceeded to do the same thing, but he quickly shut and locked his door.

  “What the fuck is wrong now?” I said, looking at him with a mean mug.

  “I’m going to need you to handle something for me.”

  I looked at him like he was crazy. “And what the fuck is that?”

  He quickly unzipped his pants and exposed his rock-hard dick. I was a little shocked to say the least. The myth about fat men having little dicks was just that, a myth. This big muthafucka was packing.

  “I heard about your services from some of the fellas that work here, and I was wondering if you could help a brotha out.”

  I looked at him as a smile crept across my face. I was like “what the hell” I got a little bit of time. I got down on my knees pulled a condom and did the damn thing.

  After I sucked him off, I bent him over his desk and read him his rights.

  “You have a right to remain silent.” Wham! Wham!

  “Anything you say can and will be used against you.” Wham! Wham!

  “You have a right to an attorney.” Wham! Wham! “If you don’t have one.” Wham! “One will be appointed to you.” Wham! Wham! “Do.” Wham! “You.” Wham! “Understand?” Wham! Wham!

  He yelped out, “Yes!”

  I finished punishing his ass and came on his back. Then I cleaned myself up and walked out of the precinct with
yet another officer of the law under my belt.

  I pulled up to Wallace’s condo and quickly made my way to the shower. I had to wash the scent of sex off me before he got home. I knew for a fact that he would want to fuck when he got home, and I couldn’t have another man’s scent on me.

  Just as I got in and out of the shower, Wallace was making his way in the front door. I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing I barely escaped an altercation. I jumped right into baby-I’m-glad-you-home mode. He didn’t suspect a thing, or at least, he wasn’t giving off any vibes like he knew something.

  “Hey, Wallace, baby.” I walked up to him as I walked out of the bathroom and down the hall to the foyer where he was placing his keys and another duffle bag. “My baby is tired?” I cooed slyly as he embraced me face to face. I pecked small kisses on his neatly groomed face.

  “Umm, baby,” he moaned. “That’s what I like to come home to.”

  I sashayed away and let him get a good look at what he was missing all day. “Baby, if you get in the shower, by the time you get out, I’ll have dinner ready for you, and then we can have some dessert by the fire.”

  “Sure, baby boy.” Wallace slapped me on the ass as he walked by and went into the bathroom to start the shower.

  I walked into the kitchen and grabbed two steaks out of the freezer, seasoned them, and threw them on our jumbo George Foreman Grill. I preheated the oven and then grabbed some pre-cut red potatoes out of the refrigerator and threw them in the oven, along with some green beans from a can. Wallace liked to take long showers, about twenty to twenty-five minutes, so I knew I had some time to make sure everything was hot for him, including me.

  About fifteen minutes into preparing the meal, my cell phone began to ring. I looked at the caller ID, not prepared to talk to who was calling. I didn’t not want to; I just wanted privacy when I did. I hesitantly pushed the talk button and answered the call.