Conspiracy

by De'nesha Diamond

  “Depends on who you ask. There has never been any really convincing evidence, but the theory persists even among the naysayers.”

  “Do you believe it exists?”

  Dr. Z chuckled. “My working scientific philosophy is: anything is possible. One thing’s for sure, it’s a compelling theory. There are some who believe the ability was once very common in ancient civilizations. They believe it as a working theory of how things like Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids were built. The ability to read minds, move objects just by thinking of it? Who wouldn’t want to be able to do all of that?”

  Ned nodded.

  “Unfortunately, most of Avery’s subjects died excruciating deaths during his home experiments. Except the three women—now two—the police rescued from his basement. Even I had thought that Dr. Avery died a complete failure until Ms. Young here killed her mother. She kept repeating that she’d only thought about it. Of course, the courts found her insane and then we were free to experiment with her at St. Elizabeths. I believe the tests aggravated her state of mind and things went very wrong. Now here we stand.”

  “What will happen to her now?” Ned inquired.

  “Now we’ll have her transferred to our lab for a more extensive examination.” He sighed and rubbed his tired eyes. “Fortunately for us, she has no living relatives to claim her body, so instead of being buried in a potter’s field, she will be donated to science.”

  Ned absorbed the doctor’s words. “But what about the other two?”

  “Ah. That is the trillion-dollar question.”

  22

  Abrianna had pulled off a miracle. Shawn had agreed to meet her at their favorite Starbucks for coffee well before noon. He wasn’t a happy camper since he’d only been asleep for a couple hours when she’d called. And he was none too pleased when she told him her plan.

  “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” Shawn thundered, snatching off his shades to hit her with his bright blue gaze. “You’re actually going to let those two muscle heads play you?”

  “Lower your voice,” Abrianna hissed when half the coffee shop crowd swiveled their necks in their direction.

  “Nah. Uh-uh. This is what the fuck you get when you drop bombs like this in public. You get a scene.”

  “Well. I’m not in the mood for a scene, okay?”

  Shawn’s withering stare nailed her to her chair.

  She pretended that her coffee wasn’t scalding her tongue.

  “I don’t get it,” Shawn said. “This shit sounds like you got set up for the okey-doke. Why the fuck are you stuck with the whole fucking tab? What is Moses doing to come up with the money?”

  “I don’t know. We haven’t talked since I kicked his ass the other day—the second time.”

  “Uh-huh.” Shawn uncrossed and then re-crossed his legs while simultaneously flipping his blond hair over his shoulders. “I know that the dick was good, Bree. But ain’t no way you’re telling me that the shit is eighty-thousand-dollars good.”

  “The bricks were stolen the night of the surprise birthday party, so it’s my fault. The tab is on me. I wasn’t looking out.”

  “Bullshit. None of our people would’ve copped shit out of your crib. You know that.”

  “I thought I knew that, but the bricks were gone and Zeke was seconds away from putting a bullet in Moses’s head.”

  “And how the hell did Zeke miss that big-ass head of his?”

  “Shawn!”

  “What? It’s no secret that I don’t like that muthafucka. Why are you surprised I’m going in? I don’t like him, and he sure as hell doesn’t like me either.”

  Her gaze drifted, which she realized was a mistake because it was confirmation.

  Shawn pulled a long breath. “Okay. On to another subject: When are you coming to a meeting with me?”

  Abrianna groaned. “Can’t you give it a rest?”

  “How can I when you meet me for coffee at eight in the morning and your eyes are already dilated and your nose is bleeding?”

  Gasping, she swiped a knuckle under her nose. “Fuck. Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

  He watched her as she snatched up the few napkins on their small table. “How about now? Did I get it all?” Before he answered, she dug through her cross-body purse for a compact.

  “You have a problem,” Shawn insisted.

  “At the moment, I have eighty thousand problems.” The joke bombed as she checked out her swollen nose in the mirror. “That is, unless you want to make a donation.” She snapped the compact shut.

  “Shit. Bank of America is blowing my cell up every other hour about my overdrawn account now. Maybe you should go start a GoFundMe page. I’m sure there are plenty of bleeding hearts out there who’d love to help out a stripper with a heart of gold.”

  “Nothing wrong with your sense of humor at this hour, I see.”

  “Look, Bree. I love you—and we need to address this. If I can get clean, you can too.”

  “The only difference is that you want to be clean,” she said. “I tried yesterday, honestly. But you just don’t understand what happens to me when I’m clean. The buzzing, the headaches—the mood swings. It’s too much. I can try to cut back, but . . . I can’t quit. I think I’d go insane if I did.” Her thoughts drifted back to Shalisa Young, living in a federal mental hospital.

  “So what? You’re giving up on me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? You don’t think that I’ve lost enough friends to drugs. Is that it?”

  “So my drug habits are all about you?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “That’s what it sounds like you’re saying.”

  “It’s not all about me, but it affects me. You’re my best friend. And . . . I always feel guilty because . . .”

  “Because you were the one who introduced me to drugs?”

  Their eyes locked, and Abrianna hated that she’d taken the dig.

  Shawn lowered his gaze to his cooling coffee. “Yes. I hate that I’m the one that got you hooked because I’m scared that it’s going to kill you one day.”

  His voice trembled with more emotion than she was prepared to deal with at that early hour. “I don’t have much out here,” Shawn continued. “We both don’t. But you . . . I honestly don’t know what I’d do if something ever happened to you. I mean that.”

  A warm glow spread throughout her. Just knowing that somebody gave a real fuck touched her.

  “Oh God. I gave you a big head now,” he joked, and the mood lightened considerably at their table.

  Somehow she’d managed to get out of the conversation without having to promise that she’d go to rehab—something that she was definitely not interested in doing. “So you’ll go with me out to Madam Nevaeh’s crib?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “C’mon. Please? What if I roll out there and it’s a fucking trap, and the next damn thing I know I’m being shipped to some sex-slave operation down in some crazy, dangerous border town?”

  “And what the fuck am I supposed to do? I’m a lover, not a fighter. Besides, I’m a pretty bitch too. They’ll just be getting two for the price of one.”

  She laughed.

  He didn’t.

  “Please.” Abrianna gave her best sad puppy-dog eyes.

  “I don’t know. I have another show tonight. When are you doing this?” He picked up his coffee.

  “I’m waiting for her car now.”

  Shawn choked. “What?”

  “May as well get the shit over with. Angel said that I can make the money back in no time.”

  Shawn sighed. “Since when do you believe shit that random bitches be saying?”

  “That’s why I want you to come with me.”

  He said nothing for a long time.

  “Please?”

  “Are you really all right with doing this? I thought that after . . .”

  “Craig Avery,” she filled in for him. “It’s all right. You can say his name. I’m not going to fall a
part.”

  “There’s got to be another way to come up with the money.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  Shawn cocked his head. “You really can’t think of another way?”

  Understanding set in. “You’re shitting me, right? You’re not seriously suggesting my parents, are you?”

  He shrugged. “They are an option.”

  “No. They’re not.” The grip on her coffee cup tightened, but before she knew it, the old screaming voices from her childhood filled her head. A familiar helplessness covered her like an old blanket.

  Outside the coffee shop’s glass window, an eye-catching midnight-blue Bentley rolled up to the curb. Seconds later, Abrianna’s cell phone trilled.

  Shawn lifted an eyebrow while she answered the call.

  “Hello.” She turned and waved to the driver. “Yes. I see you. I’m on my way out.” She disconnected the call.

  “You’re shitting me. That’s your ride?”

  Abrianna sprang to her feet. “You coming?”

  Shawn’s gaze swiveled between her and the car, and then back again. “Fuck yeah.”

  23

  Zeke had always considered himself to be a reasonable businessman. He’d learned at an early age what it took to be a real boss in Washington, D.C. Money was power. Fear was respect. And mercy should be doled out, but rarely. It was important for his people to see that he was a strong but reasonable leader. The way Zeke saw it, he had been more than reasonable with his old high school friend Moses Darrough.

  Back in the day, Moses had been the big man on campus. He’d been the school’s football superstar. That meant that he’d won all the hot chicks and bragged endlessly about the number of college football scholarships that had been offered to him. But then there had been the injury and the scholarship money had dried up and the gold-diggers-in-training had dropped his ass like a hot potato. Since Moses hadn’t bothered to actually learn anything other than how to throw a ball around, he’d become a shadow of his former self. He’d gone from hood superstar to the neighborhood hustler.

  Zeke, on the other hand, had always had a good head for business. But as big of a name as he’d made for himself as the Teflon Don, Zeke knew that the real men of power wore thousand-dollar suits and worked for the government. To get with those people, the lobbyists on K Street needed men like him to provide certain services and products to bribe the G-men to get the legislation that they wanted. It was a very intricate and profitable system—for all involved.

  One could take a man out of the streets, but could never take the street out of the man. Zeke provided everything from drugs to pussy for numerous parties and galas.

  Such bribes also extended to all the branches of the government. When political affiliation failed and expensive trips and vacations didn’t work, companies and K Street would once again come to his door—and in return they offered protection. For pussy, there was no one better than Madam Nevaeh. Only the best women worked for her, and she knew how to keep her girls in line and how to keep all their mouths shut. She threw the best parties and blended effortlessly in with the political elites. Primarily because her mother had once lived the life before marrying her sugar daddy and becoming a senator’s wife.

  Zeke had doubts that the undeniably sexy Abrianna Parker would be a nice fit in her stable. Of course, he had given serious consideration to making Abrianna his mistress, but with Nevaeh hosting her annual masquerade party this weekend, he figured it was as good a time as any to see the kind of money she could make them. He could always sample the product himself later. And as far as those other services, his hottest product on the market right now was a crazy synthetic party drug called Cotton Candy. Its pink coloring was popular with the kids as well as the affluent urbanites. Its number-one selling point was not only could it get your ass like supernova high, but a single dose could last up to three days. With the price point of a hundred and twenty dollars a gram compared to the five dollars a gram for regular cocaine, Zeke was well on his way to becoming the Bill Gates of the streets.

  In the past six months, he’d had other crime bosses from surrounding states begging to do business, all trying to work out the recipe. When that hadn’t worked, they’d conspired to find out who ran his labs.

  Zeke vowed that he would die before he let that information hit the streets. However, the dude he’d swiped up claimed to have worked with some crazy fucker some years back. Said the man used to do all these wild experiments for the government. That shit didn’t surprise Zeke one bit, not with historic shit like Agent Orange and the annual new virus always breaking out in Africa after American doctors arrived with vaccinations.

  Eventually, the lab rat claimed, his old boss had gone bat-shit crazy after years of using some of his experiments on himself. Zeke knew then that the scientist couldn’t have been a brother. The number-one rule of the streets was to never get high on your own supply. Regardless, Zeke had a unique and hot product that stacked paper in his offshore accounts. Life should be good, but instead he had to deal with Moses’s messy ass.

  It was hardly fair to make his girl Bree pay off Moses’s debt while he roamed the streets free as a bird. That shit wouldn’t look right. Homies on the street would think that he’d gone soft, and then the next thing he knew, other street punks would think that they could get over too.

  A lesson needed to be taught.

  The sound of two car doors slamming caught Zeke’s attention. Sighing, he reached for his glass of brandy and waited for his men to lead his old high school buddy into his study.

  “Get off of me! Get off of me, muthafucka,” Moses barked, but he was still dragged into Zeke’s office against his will.

  Zeke remained calm and forced himself to put aside their history together.

  “Yo, Zeke, man. What . . . what is this all about? This shit ain’t even necessary, man. You know all you had to do was text me, homie. I would’ve came without all of this static,” Moses said, still wrestling with the two heavies, Roach and Gunner.

  Leaning back in his leather chair, Zeke asked, “Would I be texting the burner that you tossed, or was there some other number that you failed to tell me about?”

  “What? Ooooh,” Moses said. “I forgot that I haven’t given you the new digits yet. See what had happened was I broke my old shit and had to get a new number. But I was going to tell you about it.”

  Zeke stared straight through Moses.

  Moses started squirming again. “Really, man. This is all just some misunderstanding.

  “Were you going to tell me that you moved too?”

  “Well, that couldn’t be helped. Bree and I . . . had a little lover’s spat and . . .”

  “Yeah. I heard she broke your shit,” he said, gesturing to the cast on Moses’s arm.

  “What? That’s bullshit.” He lifted the cast. “I broke this, uh, while moving my shit in my new girl’s crib. That’s all.”

  Zeke chuckled. “Yeah. That would be my story too if a girl whooped my ass.”

  Moses dug in, “I don’t know where you’re getting your information, but that’s not what the fuck happened.”

  “Really. I don’t have the energy to pretend to care,” Zeke said, bored. “But I do want to discuss my missing bricks, i.e. my money.”

  Moses’s eyes grew wider by the second. “Man, I’m sorry about that shit. The best I can figure is my ex must’ve flipped that shit on her own as payback when we broke up.”

  Zeke looked to his boy Roach.

  Roach released one of Moses’s arms and walked across the plastic on the floor to set a large satchel on Zeke’s desk. When he opened it, everyone could clearly see the hundred-dollar bills piled high inside.

  “So how do you explain this?”

  Moses’s tall ass looked faint. “Now, see. That ain’t what it looks like.”

  “It looks like a bag of money to me. How about you, boys?”

  Roach and Gunner nodded.

  “That’s what it looks like to us too, bos
s,” Gunner said.

  Moses’s childhood stutter roared back to life. “B-b-but . . . that isn’t mine,” Moses said.

  Zeke let that lie hang in the air between them.

  “I mean . . . I know what you’re thinking,” Moses said.

  “Really? Do tell. What the fuck am I thinking?”

  “Y-y-you . . . think that I sold your bricks and kept the money. But I didn’t. I got that from the bank.”

  “What? You’re a bank robber now?”

  “No! I . . . I . . .” The man’s eyes moistened. “C’mon, man. Cut me a break. You know me. I would never steal or cheat you.”

  “And yet, here we are.” He opened a drawer on his desk and removed his precious baby: a .44 caliber revolver.

  Moses lost his shit and the waterworks came fast and furious. “Yo, man. Don’t do this. Please. I know I fucked up. I swear. I was going to do right by you. See?” He gestured to the bag. “There is more than what I owe you there. Take it, and let’s call it square.”

  “So now this is your money?”

  Moses worked his mouth, but didn’t seem to know what to say.

  “You know what? I’m going to cut you a break.”

  Moses slumped in relief.

  “I mean . . . I’m still going to kill you—but I do believe you when you say that this money doesn’t belong to you. You stole it—from the bank, but it belongs to your girl Bree, doesn’t it? You just emptied all the money that she’d stashed away for years in her safe deposit box.”

  “How did you . . . ?”

  “I have eyes and ears everywhere. You taking the money prevented her from skipping town and from simply paying your debt. So you stole my shit, stole her shit, left her to pay your debt on her back, and plotted to start making your own king moves. With this kind of kick-starter money, you thought that could set up shop in my muthafuckin’ city under my nose. How am I doing?”

  Moses’s voice failed him.

  Disappointed, Zeke sighed. “What happened to you, man? In high school, you had the whole world at your feet. Now look at you. You’re sad, man. Just a pathetic waste of space. I’m embarrassed for you.”

  Moses’s tears and nose ran fast and furious.