Watch Out for the Big Girls 3

by J. M. Benjamin

  Jake went crashing to the dirt ground. Pure, unadulterated fright filled him. He hadn’t seen the news during the last four days and had no idea of what had taken place at Officer Douglass’s family’s memorial service, let alone his alleged connection and involvement.

  “Wh . . . what’d I do?” Jake voice was shaky.

  “Shut up, asshole!” Reddick barked. Kneeling down, Reddick put his right knee in Jake’s back, pulled out his handcuffs, and then roughly grabbed hold of his left arm. In seconds he had Jake cuffed and on his feet.

  “Suspect’s been detained, everything’s clear,” Reddick spat into his walkie-talkie.

  “Suspect?” Jake Stolkoff’s eyes widened. “You got the wrong guy, mister,” he offered.

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut your fucking mouth?” Reddick yanked him by the handcuffs.

  Jake let out a cry from the tightening of the handcuffs around his wrists. He watched as the agents all dispersed and exited his private property. Within minutes, an SUV zoomed up and Reddick tossed him into the back of the Denali.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, Jake Stolkoff sat handcuffed to a metal table in a federal building, while Agent Reddick stood up against the interrogation room’s wall with arms folded.

  “Look, I told you, she had on a blond wig and big, dark sunglasses. It coulda been any one’a dem,” Jake expressed in frustration while being detained and harassed in the small room he was being held in downtown in the old Las Vegas area. He had just spilled his guts about everything he knew about the day Officer Douglass was killed.

  By now, Agent Reddick concluded that he was telling the truth. Jake was just paid to do a simple job for the Double Gs. He was hoping that they had slipped up and left some type of evidence, but catching a break like that was wishful thinking. The reality was that Jake committed no crime on his part and, once again, the Double Gs had outsmarted them. Not even the FAA could tag him for any violations. The airspace wasn’t restricted. On top of that, during the investigation it was confirmed that the bullet found lodged in Douglass’s head did not come from the air, but from a strategic sniper position from a safe and far distance.

  Once again, there was no leads. Agent Reddick was sure that Chief Officer Mobley would remove him from the Special Crime Division. He scratched his balding head and looked down at Jake, and then back over at the two-way mirror.

  “Get ’im outta here!” he yelled with an attitude.

  Chapter 7

  No matter what season it was, Freemont Street never seemed to change. There were only two versions of it: “day” and “night.” The daytime was horrible for the people who lived even close to the lengthy, rundown drug strip. And nighttime was much more terrifying. For Esco and Freeze, it was their home. It was their foundation. It was the first location where they opened up and built on their own, besides the projects that Freeze’s father once controlled. But Freeze didn’t want to hide in the shadows of the respect that his father left behind, so he made his own mark by taking over the first street that his old head, Frenchie, taught him how to work. It was the same street they all once lived on, the same street the cops dragged him away from to lock him in juvenile hell. Ironically, it became the same street that became the most prosperous to him. It was home again.

  The sun was just beginning to set. Esco sat in the driver’s seat of the brand new all-white BMW X6, rolling up a blunt of Kush. He kept his tongue pressed down on his lip as he broke up the multicolored buds and sprinkled them along the Dutch leaf in an evenly thin line. He then took the edges of both ends in his fingertips and held the center of the gutted cigar to his lip before twirling it around in a thin coat of spit. The blunt was sealed, ready for ignition.

  Freeze was sitting in the passenger’s seat counting stacks of money that was just dropped off to him by one of his workers. No matter what, he always double-checked.

  “Shit’s crazy,” Esco blurted, distracting Freeze from his count. Freeze let it slide, but he didn’t acknowledge Esco as he continued. “I know you heard what happened at that pig Douglass’s family service,” Esco continued.

  “That’s good for his bitch ass. I wish I woulda popped ’em. Them bitches just keep getting in my way,” Freeze retorted, still counting the folded stacks of cash. He flipped each bill and separated them, putting them in order and making sure they were all facing the same way. He liked all of his bills a certain way: all of the presidents’ faces upright. “How many times I gotta tell these li’l niggas . . .” he expressed in frustration while shaking his head.

  Esco waited for the red-hot car lighter to pop back out. When it did, Freeze’s hand beat him to it.

  “Chill. This shit’s brand new. You’re gonna fuck up the book value. Use ya damn lighta.”

  The blunt hung from the corner of Esco’s lips as he cracked a smile. Sometimes he just liked to test Freeze’s nerves. He pulled the blunt from his mouth with his left hand and patted his pockets with the right. After fishing for it in his sweats, he finally lit up. The first pull was always the best to him. He inhaled in a long, deep pull, closed his eyes, and held his breath until his lungs tried to force the smoke out against his will. He set the lighter next to the fun on his lap.

  Freeze waved away the secondhand smoke. “Crack the window. Fuckin’ with you, the police’a roll up and we’ll get knocked off!”

  “Stop complainin.’ We own the fuckin’ police. You must mean the feds. But, trust me, if they roll up on us, I suggest you take a long pull’a this shit too ’cause it means we ain’t neva gonna see the streets again.”

  Freeze couldn’t help but crack a smile at hearing the truth. He liked when Esco challenged him. “You’re right. That was just the best excuse I could come up with. I just ain’t tryin’a catch no fuckin’ lung cancer. And you fucked up my count. It’s your turn.” Freeze scooped up all of the money from his lap and dumped it over Esco’s gun. He then reclined his butter-soft leather seat, pulled his Raiders fitted hat low over his nose, folded both arms behind his head, and closed his eyes.

  Just as he fell into relax mode, he heard a squeaky sound that he didn’t like. The noise was rapidly getting too close. He instinctively reacted.

  Li’l Rodney mistakenly pulled his raggedy bike directly up to the passenger window of the X6 and almost immediately pissed himself as he stared down the barrel of a chrome Desert Eagle .45. “Whoaaaa shit!” he yelled.

  “What the fuck do you want? Why you runnin’ all up on my shit like that?” Freeze asked the fourteen-year-old, who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and whose eyes were bulging.

  Li’l Rodney could barely speak. “I . . . I . . .” He almost forgot the reason he came.

  “Think fast, li’l nigga!” Freeze reinforced as he thumbed back the hammer and tightened his index finger around the trigger.

  The sound of the hammer sliding back only erased more of Li’l Rodney’s short-term memory by each second. His mouth hung open. The triangular barrel never wavered away from his nose. “I . . . I . . . ummmm.”

  “Nigga, spit the shit out already ’fore you get ya head blown from here to that stoop behind you,” Esco yelled across Freeze through the thick clouds of weed smoke.

  Freeze’s eyes were empty as he studied the young boy wondering about his intentions. And then it finally registered.

  “Oh, shit! That’s right!” Li’l Rodney was so excited to remember why he was there that he released the right grip of his handlebar while leaning the bike to his left, balancing it as he reached into his back pocket.

  Kabwooooooong!

  Both Esco and Rodney flinched as the entire X6 shook from just the echo of the miniature cannon’s explosion. Li’l Rodney fell off his bike and rolled onto his stomach, balling up into the fetal position as Freeze calmly exited the X6 with the smoking gun still exposed.

  “Get up. You ain’t hit,” he softly stated as he kicked Li’l Rodney.

  Li’l Rodney rolled over on his butt and backpedaled away, planting the palms of his h
ands and the heels of his worn-down Timberlands on the concrete. “Don’t kill me! I’m just deliverin’ a message,” he cried out, extending an open palm forward as if it would somehow stop a bullet.

  Freeze had missed the first shot on purpose. He didn’t trust Li’l Rodney’s quick movement. He always felt if he would be assassinated, it would be by some young, dumb punk who an older person brainwashed. To Freeze, that would be the only way. “So, what’s the message?” Freeze asked, looking down.

  Li’l Rodney looked around for the piece of paper that fell from his hands when the shot rang out. “It’s around here somewhere. I dropped it.”

  Freeze was frustrated now. He pointed the gun directly at Li’l Rodney’s head, this time not intending to miss. Li’l Rodney sensed it and panicked.

  “No! No! It’s right there! Look!” Li’l Rodney pointed behind Freeze. The envelope lay under the bike frame. Li’l Rodney kept his hands high up in the air as he further explained, “Some older guy said it came to his house. He paid me twenty dollars to deliver it to you.”

  Esco hopped out of the vehicle and jogged around to the sidewalk to retrieve the letter. He took one look at it and screwed his face up while passing it to Freeze. “Yup! It’s for you. Let li’l dude go. C’mon, we’re out.”

  “You can’t just run up on people like that, shorty. Next time somebody offers to overpay you for a job that they could do themselves, either let them do it or run away with the money. If somethin’ seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Freeze let himself back into the X6 while tucking his pistol back in.

  Li’l Rodney didn’t get back up until the X6 pulled off and was far down the street. That’s when he stood up, brushing himself off. He was pissed. “Bitch-ass nigga!” he mumbled under his breath. Although they had pulled off, in his mind, he was still afraid that if he said it any louder, Freeze would’ve heard him and turned back around to finish the job. He jumped back on his rusty, chipped bike and pedaled away mad at the world, but twenty dollars richer.

  “You be buggin’!” Esco exclaimed as he pulled off.

  “Tell that to Carlito, from Carlito’s Way, Sunny from A Bronx Tale, Mitch from Paid in Full . . . Shall I go on?” Freeze retorted as he cracked open the envelope.

  “Life ain’t no movie,” Esco rebutted as he ran through the red light. Patience was his biggest issue, which was why he refused to wait for the light to turn green.

  Freeze didn’t even notice. He was still trying to make a point. “Exactly, my nigga. Li’l nigga coulda smoked me, and you. You just neva know.”

  Esco couldn’t argue with that. He had witnessed a lot.

  Freeze continued, “Shit, look how many niggas we done put in the dirt when we was young.”

  “True,” Esco confirmed, seeming mentally distant now. His mind traveled elsewhere. Something had settled in and disturbed him. His past had been dug up, and it resurfaced right in front of him in the most haunting way, but he kept it to himself for the moment. “So what the letter say?” he asked.

  Freeze ignored the question and began to focus on reading, hoping that the letter he held in his hands wasn’t anything like the last one when he was in juvenile prison. He still had it to this very day. It was that very letter that changed his entire life and what he blamed for how he turned out: heartless. Now, ten years later, here was a new one.

  Youngblood,

  I know it’s been many years since we’ve been in contact. I’m not proud of myself about that. We all make mistakes. I’ve learned from mines. I know I’m still the last person you want to hear from, but you have to understand something. I thought I’d never see the light of day again. That’s why I wrote that first letter. Being that you never responded, I can only imagine how you feel. But I will find out soon.

  To get to the point, the reason that I’m writing you out of the blue is because, since you’ve been home, your name has been ringing bells all through the prison system. Most of the stories I hear I believe because it all stemmed from things I taught you when you was young. All the way down to the locations. I know you’re doing real good for yourself. It took me a long time just to track you down.

  I don’t know any other way to ask other than straight up. I need your help. I know you’ve heard about our arresting officers getting killed. They admitted to planting evidence, and my death sentence is being overturned. I’ve been given a second chance, and I just need a good lawyer who can get me in quick for my appeal bond and immediate release. A paid lawyer. Any way you see fit to make my request become possible, I will be grateful, and I’ll express just how much when I get released. I might be an old man, but I still put that work in. And I’ll be forever in your debt as I am already. I’ll owe you my life. Please give this letter serious consideration before making your decision.

  Frenchie

  Esco kept driving but stayed silent as he used his peripheral vision to keep a close eye on Freeze. Freeze rested the letter on his lap. He snorted and shook his head in disbelief. Rubbing his chin, he found himself drifting in deep thought.

  This shit can’t be real. As far as he was concerned, Frenchie was as good as dead. He had long ago forgiven him for the part he played in his father’s death and his mother’s addiction to drugs, but he never thought there was ever a possibility that he’d ever see Frenchie out in the free world again. On the inside his emotions were running wild but, on the surface, he was stone-faced, not wanting Esco to bombard him with any questions. Esco was the only one he ever told about his history with Frenchie, but he left out the part about his parents. Not knowing how to really feel or what he wanted to do about what he just read, Freeze just stared down at the letter. He was still trying to process the words on the paper. Then, without warning, he abruptly crumpled up the letter into a hard ball, rolled down the window, and threw it out, watching from the side mirror as it rolled down the street in the opposite direction. A few feet up the street, Freeze had a change of heart.

  “Stop the car!” he yelled.

  “What?” Esco asked.

  “You heard me!” Freeze said. “Stop the fuckin’ car.” His tone was much more aggressive.

  Esco slammed on the brakes. He watched as the passenger door swung open. Freeze disappeared in a flash. Esco watched in the rearview mirror. Freeze was running down the middle of the street chasing the balled-up letter until he finally caught up to it. Seconds later he was hopping back into the X6. He shut the door without saying a word. He opened the paper, neatly refolded it, and tucked it in his back pocket. Shaking his head from side to side, Esco pulled back off as Freeze continued to remain silent.

  No music played. As the moving vehicle floated up the avenue so did Freeze’s mind. He traveled back in time to an incident he had remembered with Frenchie, when he was just ten years old, when the city was much wilder than it currently was.

  After crack had taken over the streets in place of coke and heroin, things changed for the worse. The late eighties and early nineties set a bad example for all those coming up. It seemed like gangsters, hustlers, stick-up kids, pimps, and boosters ran the city. It wasn’t easy to be from the inner-city ghettos, especially if you lived anywhere near Freemont Street, which was the wildest back then; and Frenchie was one of the reasons why, Freeze recalled.

  It was a warm spring day. Freeze was coming home from school. He usually took the long way on purpose. Groups of kids his age and up were all around. He was by himself making his way holding both straps of his book bag as they came down his shoulders. He couldn’t wait to get home and change into his basketball gym shorts and go to the local courts to showcase his developing skills. Freeze had made his way down the long backstreets dribbling his invisible basketball and imitating the fancy moves he would put on the nonexistent defenders who tried to guard him. It was a routine he practiced during most of the long walk home. It was the reason why he opted not to ride the bus.

  Eventually, Freeze came to the beginning of his least favorite block, Freemont Street. And, to get wher
e he was going, he had to walk the full length of it. First, the chipped-up sidewalks threw off the rhythm of his fancy footwork. Next, he hated passing through the countless amounts of junkies who popped in and out of the alleyways that somehow still managed to stay dark in the middle of the broad daylight. They always got in his way. And then there were the hookers who would try to use their filthy hands to pinch the cheeks of the cute little kid, him, and he would rudely spit on them and have to run. The only part of the route he did like was the hustlers who would pass him a dollar or two out of respect for his dad, or sometimes just for no reason.

  On this particular day, aside from the traffic, the long path of Freemont wasn’t that cluttered. Everyone seemed to be piled up at the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard. As he approached, he could see that both sides of the street were jam-packed. A lot of cars were parked up and down blasting the latest music over each other, mostly mix tapes. All of the hustlers and girls were out. But most of them were clumped up in one specific spot farther up the street in the same direction that Freeze was headed.

  As he made his way, the crowd grew thicker with each step he took. Everyone seemed to be laughing at something. Freeze was too far away and too short to see, but was getting closer to the center of attention. He looked across the street and saw all eyes focusing on the same side he was on. They too were laughing. The hysteria didn’t seem very genuine, though. It was either halfhearted or just plain fake. Most of them were overdoing it, as if they were trying to impress somebody.

  As Freeze got closer, he could hear the constant roar of an engine, but he couldn’t see the vehicle. He finally made his way to the first person he had to cut past to get through and be on his way.

  Vroooooom, vrooooooom, vroooooom, vroooooom.