by Kareem
Madder than he ever found himself in his life, Korey threw the phone to the floor with all of his might. He then began stomping it with the bottom of his Tims until the phone was destroyed. Like Keisha predicted, the content of the recording angered him. It did more than anger Korey; it made him weeping mad internally knowing that this was a disgraceful incident that his daughter would have to live with for the rest of her life. The mental and emotional trauma that she was experiencing from it was something he knew she was dealing with, but on what level? How would this influence her trust in men later in life? And how would she view him as her father if he didn’t take this matter seriously enough to avenge her dignity and womanhood as one under his and her uncle’s umbrella of protection? He stomped some more on the now completely destroyed phone.
Everyone in the room was looking at him express his anger. They didn’t move. They didn’t make a sound. They all, but one, knew what was on his mind: murder! KJ, the one who had no clue, tapped his mother on her leg and said, “Mommy, why my daddy mad?” He looked in her eyes with his innocent and pure light brown ones for an answer.
Keisha pulled KJ closer to herself and wrapped her arms around him. “That phone was showing an ugly picture that your dad didn’t like. He’s a’ight.” But she knew that he wasn’t all right. She knew Korey was deeply disturbed by seeing his baby girl in such a seemingly helpless and compromising position.
She called his name, “Korey,” and waved him over to her, but Hammer looked at her and shook his head as if to say, “Now is not a good time.” He knew his ace well enough to know that, when highly upset, he didn’t like to talk. Not to mention there was nothing needing to be discussed at this point because not only had Olivia given her uncle Hammer the phone with the recording of her situation, she gave him her ex’s apartment address. Better than that, in Hammer’s view, was her informing him that her ex’s buddy, Tim, was still in town at her ex’s apartment, but would be leaving for military duty the coming Monday.
However, in spite of Hammer not wanting Keisha to bother with Korey at this very moment of being angry, she insisted he come to her. After all, she knew him too and had even come to love him very much, as the very mother of his junior!
He walked over to her with a look on his face that she’d never seen before. It was cold. Scary would be an understatement.
“Are you gonna be okay, babe?” she asked softly.
“I’m good,” he said. He then turned to Olivia, who was messing with her little brother. “O, did you get that other info I wanted and needed you to get?”
“I got it, K,” Hammer cut in, knowing immediately and exactly what he was referring to before Olivia could say a word in reply. “Matter fact, K, peep this.” Hammer waved him back over.
“I’m straight,” he said to Keisha before stepping back close to Hammer, seeing the look on her face that she wasn’t sure of his mental state.
Hammer walked Korey into Korey’s bedroom of the house with his arm around Korey’s neck. “My nigga, O gave me all we needed. I say we load up right now, handle business with these niggas, and be out of Chapel Hill by early morning. I’m fuckin’ ready. I know you are. What’s up?”
“Let’s go,” Korey shot back in a hurry. He didn’t even have to think about what he wanted to do at this point. It was already evident.
Chapter 39
Shamika cried her eyes red nearly her whole way home after having an argument with Korey. Inside, she felt disrespected and hurt by him waving off what she had to say to him concerning their daughter’s situation and how she felt Korey should go about handling it. Walking out on her as he did, all angry, made her sense that what she had to say was of no value to him.
The tears kept coming as she entered her house. She was extremely tired and exhausted already from just having an extremely long and busy day at work. She had seven hairdos, two of which were micro braids that took two and a half hours of finger exercising apiece to complete. Such was a tedious task within itself. Add that along with her other time-consuming hairdos and trying to talk some sense into Korey’s head and that equaled a serious migraine headache.
She took two 200-mg ibuprofen to calm her thumping head and prepared to bathe. While making preparations to bathe, she was thinking that if she didn’t love Korey so very much, she would joyfully abandon the task of trying to get him to stop reacting to certain situations the thug way. She knew in her heart and mind that him reacting the thug way to the hand he felt life dealt him had somewhat to do with being raised by a single mother and all.
His mother struggled when he was younger to make sure he had food on his table and decent clothes on his back. Korey had told her once that before his mother ultimately gave her life to Christ, he awoke late one night to use the bathroom and overheard her having sex. When he finished using the bathroom, he saw a man he’d never seen before coming out of his mother’s bedroom. He later asked his mother if that man was his father, because he never knew his father. She told him no, that the man was someone she met and needed to help pay their rent. Korey knew from that moment that his mother had given up her body in exchange for cash. He hated that she had to do that.
Shamika knew that this was one of the reasons that when Korey had come into a lot of money, he bought her a house of her own. He never wanted her to be in a compromising position to have to pay her bills. Shamika didn’t want him to have to thug and do street things to ensure that he and their family didn’t go without. All possessing that thug mentality did was cause Korey to have to do twelve long years. Shamika remembered vividly missing him while he was away. She missed his warm, gentle smile and touch, the smell of his cologne, his passionate kisses, the way he would take his time and make love to her most prized possession. The last thing she wanted was for him to end up going back to the joint. But she was a wisher. A dreamer, if you will. Korey was his own man.
Him being his own man meant to Shamika the same thing it meant for her to be her own woman. That being, he would do what his conscience told him. But just thinking about what he would do to an individual who has disrespected their daughter was frightening. She saw the recording of those guys seemingly making sport of Olivia. She didn’t like what she saw. She wanted justice. No doubt about it. But not the type of justice she knew Korey would deliver.
She soaked her body in a tub of warm bubble bath and listened to Yolanda Adams’s “The Battle Is Not Yours” and silently prayed for her baby daddy and for his ace, Hammer. She knew them all too well. They would seek to avenge Olivia’s most shameful and embarrassing moment. Oh, how right her premonition would be.
* * *
Hammer and Korey, with a mean vendetta against Olivia’s perpetrators, sat quietly along a roadside near the address Olivia had given them of her ex’s apartment. They were dressed in all-black hoodie sweats. It was a little after 1:00 a.m. and not a lot was going on in the seemingly quiet neighborhood they were strangers to. They didn’t see the white 5.0 Mustang of her ex in his driveway.
“Them niggas probably somewhere at a club, K,” Hammer said softly as they continued to patiently await their targets’ arrival.
“They better have a damn good time because, after tonight, their partying will be over,” Korey shot back, gripping his burner.
“Oh, for sho’, my nigga,” Hammer replied, firing up a blunt. Korey didn’t smoke. He especially wouldn’t do so in the middle of handling his business. Hammer, on the other hand, needed a smoke. He always did to calm his racing nerves before putting in work.
After patiently waiting for about fifteen more minutes of what turned out to be a full hour of waiting for Olivia’s perpetrators to show their hand, they saw a white Mustang pull into the driveway.
“That’s them niggas right there, yo,” Korey said, tapping Hammer’s leg and pointing. “Pull up next to them right now.” They both could see that there were two individuals in that car pulling into that driveway: one driving and one on the passenger side.
Hammer cruised right up to their targets�
� car. Korey immediately gripped his burner, equipped with a silencer, and pulled his mask over his face. Before the driver could get out of his ride, Korey was greeting him the thug way. Pop. Pop. He shot the driver, who was the one he truly wanted: Tim, the military cat.
“What the fuck?” the other one said, trying his best to exit the passenger side. It was Olivia’s ex, but there was danger on his side as well.
Hammer had quickly made his way around to that area. With the passenger side door open, Hammer aimed his burner, also equipped with a silencer, to his forehead. Also wearing a mask, Hammer said, “I send you greeting from the Queen City, muthafucka. But, moreover, from my niece.” Pop. Pop. Pop. He unapologetically squeezed three off in his head, then quickly walked back to his car and got in on the passenger side while Korey pulled off, leaving both their victims slumped over dead in that Mustang, never to treat another woman again as they had Olivia.
They got back to the Queen City a little after 4:00 a.m., cleaned up, and went and lay next to their women and slept like murder had not occurred in ruthless fashion just hours ago at their hands.
* * *
By the end of the week, Chapel Hill was in serious mourning over what had happened. Who could have done something so horrible and gruesome to these two victims who seemingly had a lot more living to do, with bright futures ahead of them? That was the major question on the lips of the many who knew them both, as well as what could they have done to have deserved such an execution-styled murder.
Olivia knew the root cause of those cats’ early demise, but she wasn’t talking. Her father and uncle had taught her well over the years. Nor did she show any sign whatsoever of what she intimately knew. As her school semester ended, she spent her time out of school in the Queen City with family and working closely with Keisha and Kolanda, who were schooling her with all they knew about law and courtroom antics.
What her father and uncle did on her behalf brought her that much closer to them. She knew no one else loved her like them. After graduating with her bachelor’s degree from Chapel Hill, she would later go on to law school at Duke University. Meanwhile, Hammer and Korey were continuing to do their music thing and play their thug-gentlemen-like positions in this game called life, where you just never knew what would come at you next.
Like they predicted, Mad Loot and She’Cute blew up like the World Trade Center. Both their CDs were getting major radio play locally as well as nationally. They were even on tour at the moment with the two of them and another of their artists.
Furthermore, Fat Rah’s wife, Sheila, slipped back into a coma, causing any real hope of finding who shot her and killed her husband to slowly dampen. And, according to Kolanda’s source of information, the guy who provided that sketch of Korey to the authorities had passed away three years after Sheila was shot and her husband was killed. Armed with that news, Hammer and Korey sensed that someone was looking down on them and protecting them from going back to the joint.
Shamika shook her head slowly and shed tears after Korey told her how he and Hammer, unwilling to let Olivia’s perpetrators get away, shot and killed them both. Korey didn’t mind sharing it with Shamika. He knew that one thing she would never do was go to the cops about his illegal endeavors. Doing something crazy like going to the cops on him would only destroy their relationship forever. Neither of them, who had too much love invested in the other, would chance losing the other under any circumstance.
Shamika, knowing God doesn’t like ugly, prayed to Him about the matter. For one can fool man and get away with it, but who can get away with fooling God for the wrongs committed against His divine laws? Shamika knew no one could escape the justice of God. No one. She knew that God’s law says, “Thou shall not kill.” She asked God to forgive Korey and Hammer. But forgiveness is one thing. God forgetting is another. She loved Korey, and she had love for his ace, Hammer, but she loved God above her love for either of them.
She lay next to Korey with his arm around her, sound asleep, on the night he revealed what he and Hammer had done to Olivia’s violators. After silently praying for them both, she began quietly weeping, knowing that what was done in the dark would eventually come to the light. The light is representative of God, most divine and just, who gives to every man according to his deeds and actions.