Most Wanted

by Turner, Nikki

  “He is singing like a bird.... He is blaming you for everything.... He is ready to make a deal that would put this all on you.” Their words were swirling around in my head like the center of the Bermuda Triangle. I couldn’t tell what was truth or fiction. The starvation had my brain on slow motion and I couldn’t think. Still, I held my resolve.

  “I don’t fucking believe that. Warren would never do that to me,” I’d hissed at them. They wouldn’t relent. Then came the fucking icing on the cake. I could never forget when a fat, white agent with a Kojak shiny-ass bald head came into the room I was in. He held something in his hand. I eyed him suspiciously as he bent down and whispered something into the ear of the male agent who had been interrogating me. They both looked at me. Their expressions were stony.

  “We have something we want you to see, Gianna. We want you to know the truth . . . we have no reason to lie to you,” the bald guy said, his tone was like he was about to announce a death. He set the old clunky laptop he’d been holding down in front of me. No one said a word. He set up the screen, pressed a button, and Warren’s face came into focus right before my eyes. “I’m telling you . . . she asked me to take her to meet a friend. I had no idea what was in the car,” Warren was saying. I felt a sharp pain in my chest like someone had stuck their hand inside my chest and was squeezing my heart. I was blinking rapidly, that much I could tell. “She’s a chick I was sleeping with, man. It wasn’t like that between us at all. She was messing with some other dude who ran guns, but the sex was good so I kept messing with her,” Warren said. I couldn’t believe my fucking eyes. In fact, I didn’t believe my eyes because the camera seemed to be fuzzy and his voice was different. Warren had denied that he knew about the fucking guns at all and blamed all that shit on me. It couldn’t be real. It had to be some trickery on the part of those feds. But what the fuck did I know at that time? I was so flabbergasted after watching the video, I had thrown up right on the floor of the interrogation room. “See, Gianna. You better start talking and try to save yourself.”

  Finally, I told them I was ready to talk. But when the time really came for me to give my official statement, I had been scared to death and apprehensive. I was having second thoughts like a motherfucker. Snitching was a cardinal sin.

  “Sign here,” the Casper-the-friendly-ghost-looking ATF agent had said as he slid some paperwork in front of me. I squinted my eyes into little dashes and pursed my lips evilly at him. I was going through another bout of flip-flopping feelings. One minute I felt like the feds were on my side and trying to help me. The next minute, I felt like they were trying to set me up and get me to snitch on my man. The pale, white ATF agent in front of me had acted like a cocky piece of shit the whole time I had been there. I didn’t like him. I rolled my eyes at him and folded my arms defiantly. I wasn’t doing shit for him. My mind had changed so many times I didn’t know if I was coming or going. Even if the video of Warren was real, that still didn’t mean I had to stoop as low as he did and tell them pigs shit.

  “Well, you agreed to give us the statement, didn’t you? You have to give it to us in writing. We have to make sure what you tell us is true and that we can find you when it’s time for you to testify against your little thug boyfriend,” the agent continued, sliding the paperwork even closer to me. I wanted to jump up and slap the shit out of him. I was a complete emotional wreck. I felt stinky and dirty. I had hardly anything to eat but the chips and soda they’d finally given me. It was bad enough they had pulled us from Warren’s car like we were fucking terrorists, now they had me trapped in a fucking room with really no fucking choice but to give them what they wanted. I closed my eyes and rocked back and forth. I was really caught up. I hated Warren so much at that moment. He had never loved me at all is what was racing through my mind. I put my head down on the table. My entire skull ached. The pain I felt in my head was worse than a migraine. I just really wanted to go home to my mother at that point.

  “I know it’s not easy to turn in your boyfriend, Gianna, but trust me . . . woman-to-woman. I’ve seen hundreds of girls get stiff sentences refusing to tell on their men. But, let me just tell you, while those poor girls do ten or more years in a federal penitentiary, their so-called men, who they sacrificed their freedom for, move on to the next chick and live happily ever after,” the female ATF agent chimed in, moving so that she was sitting right next to me. I lifted my head up and looked at her. She was making sense. Her voice was also soft and comforting. More comforting than that fucking white prick partner of hers. The female agent wore a sympathetic look on her face. She was a black chick, fairly young, and surprisingly I felt a little sense of trust toward her. She placed her hand on my shoulder like a mother would her own child. Tears immediately started running down my face. This was some real bullshit I was in.

  “I know it hurts, but think about the fact that he put you in this position in the first place. If what you told us so far was true about how you got into this mess. What man would risk his woman’s freedom for guns? A woman he was supposed to love so much. That’s not love, Gianna. Trust me, I wouldn’t steer you wrong. As a woman, you have to look out for yourself in this situation. Just being in that car you are being considered as an accessory to some serious gun-trafficking charges. Not to mention the amount of drugs that were in the car. You could be facing some real hard time in a federal prison, very far away from your family,” the female agent said, her tone soft and endearing. She was laying it on thick, though. I thought I could actually see the judge banging the gavel, sealing my fate. I put my hands on my head and grabbed handfuls of my hair between my fingers. I just wanted to scream and pull every strand of hair from my head. It was too much to think about. If Warren was in front of me right then, I knew I could have actually clawed his eyeballs out with my bare hands. I hated him! I had started to really think about what she was telling me. It’s not like I had not heard of chicks in the hood getting the criminal justice book thrown at them, doing mad time, while I witnessed their dudes shitting on them in the streets. Some of them had even given birth behind bars, and those bastard ass niggas wouldn’t even take the babies after the girls gave birth. Thinking about that made me shake my head, but I was still hesitant about cooperating. I felt like the only Sammy the Bull right then.

  “Think about it, Gianna. Think about your own future. Think about how he used you. Don’t think about Warren the so-called boyfriend who lied to you and told you he loved you; think about Warren the drug and gun dealer. You better seriously put yourself first in this situation, because trust me, sweetheart, he is over there singing like a blue jay and he ain’t singing the let Gianna go free song,” she’d said with feeling. I believed at that moment that she was really looking out for me. I had never considered that she was just trying to get her case against Warren. I lowered my eyes thinking about the decision I had to make to give a full written statement against Warren. It fucking wasn’t easy. My stomach had started cramping and all. Basically, I had to decide whether I was going to snitch on my man to save my own ass or take a chance with him letting me take the fall. Although I was so in love at the time that I didn’t think Warren would leave me for dead like that, I couldn’t be sure, judging by how many bitches had been calling me on a daily basis saying they were with Warren. All kinds of shit started popping up to the surface of my mind. I guess you could say I didn’t really trust him that much, not enough to put my own freedom on the line. I was so fucking mad at Warren for even putting me in that position. I mean, he had always been smarter than that. Finally, I threw my hands up in surrender.

  “Here . . . just sign the agreement, Gianna. I wouldn’t let you do anything that wasn’t in your best interest. Us females have to stick together,” the female agent pressed when she saw me starting to look a little bit like I’d turn Warren in. She continued to wear that soft look on her face like she truly sympathized with me. I was torn, but I also wanted to go home. I thought about how it would have killed my mother to find out that I was behind
bars. Finally, I had decided it was Warren or me, bottom line. I picked up the black pen and signed every page of that fucking confidential informant paperwork. I felt much lighter as I did it too. I guess securing my own freedom had a way of taking a weight off of a person. I had sat there and told those fucking feds as much as I thought I knew about Warren’s business . . . which admittedly wasn’t much. I had even made some shit up just so I could get released faster. I figured the sweeter I made my cooperation seem, the faster I’d get the fuck out.

  It had worked. I was brought before a federal magistrate judge the next day and released like nothing had ever happened. I had run from that fucking courthouse so fast it wasn’t funny. I made it back to the apartment I shared with Warren and I gathered as much shit as I could. I wasn’t stupid enough to believe I could continue living there without eventually feeling heat from Warren’s people in the street. I was sure niggas would figure out real fast that I got out too fast. My initial intention was to take the ten or twenty thousand that I knew Warren always kept stashed in shoeboxes in his closet, but as I searched his shit, I found the little black velvet bag. It was like finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. I remember how much more my heart rate had sped up as I dumped the content of the bag into my hand. My eyes were wide like marbles as I examined the bounty.

  “This muthafucka!” I had gasped as I examined the huge, beautiful, crystal-clear diamonds one by one. I had counted out twenty diamonds. They were absolutely beautiful—clear, gleaming, and flawless. “These have to be worth some fucking cake!” I had murmured to myself.

  I had to sit down for a minute after finding the diamonds. Warren was into more shit than I could’ve ever imagined. Judging from those fucking diamonds, he had also been holding out on much more money than I would have ever known about too. It didn’t take long for me to decide to do what I did. At that moment, something had clicked inside of me. It was like a fight-or-flight instinct set me into motion. With those precious stones I knew I didn’t need to take any of my many shoes, clothes, and handbags with me. That stuff would’ve just weighed me down, I had reasoned. I could buy all new belongings once I had found some place that would take the diamonds off my hands. I was scared to death leaving that house with those diamonds, but there had been no looking back once I made it outside. Honestly, my initial plan was to just sell a few and keep most of them so that I could return them to Warren whenever he came home. Okay, let me stop lying. I never intended to give Warren back shit. But I really didn’t want to sell as many as I did as fast as I did. I had planned to make a new life with the stones.

  Unfortunately, shit just seemed to spiral out of control. I had ended up taking the diamonds, Warren’s 9mm Glock, and the ten thousand in cash he had in the house. I left DC in the thick of the night without telling my mother at first. I knew I’d eventually go back for her, though. When I first split, I stayed in touch with her using only throwaway phones. I told her that after the close call with the arrest, I needed to get out of town for a mental break. She bought the story, which I knew she would. I had finally gotten myself into a position that I could have my mother relocated. That’s when I settled on Virginia Beach as a good place to settle down. I figured it was far enough from DC, but not so far that I’d be living in the boondocks somewhere.

  The almost $250,000 I had made from selling the diamonds on the black market was gone in less than two years. After that, I was back to looking for a nigga to carry me. I guess you can say having a man take care of me was just how I was raised. The way I found Sidney was like magic. No lie, it seemed like everywhere I’d gone for a couple of weeks, I kept running into him. It was like fate kept bringing us into each other’s path. Either that or he was following me. The way Sidney said it was that he’d been looking for me all of his life.

  5

  Preparing for the Worst

  My cell phone rang and jolted me out of my daydream of the past. I could actually feel moisture between my legs from when I was thinking about having sex with Warren, but that couldn’t even take away the overwhelming fear I felt in the pit of my stomach knowing that he was going to be on the streets soon. I knew better than anyone what Warren was capable of. I tried to shake off the thoughts as my ringing phone continued to distract me. I looked at the phone and saw that it was Sidney. A pang of nervousness hit me hard. I had been so lost in my own thoughts, I’d forgotten about meeting with Sidney for lunch.

  “Shit! He must’ve been expecting me an hour ago,” I said to myself out loud. I didn’t even realize how long I had been sitting parked after my mother dropped that fucking bomb on me. I inhaled and exhaled before I picked up the phone. I noticed right away how terribly my hands were shaking. I was going to have to get myself together. There was no way I could show up in front of Sidney coming apart mentally like this.

  “Hey, baby,” I answered with the phoniest cheer in my voice. “No. No . . . I’m okay. Yes, I’m still coming to see you. There was an accident . . . yeah, you know how that is. Lots of traffic out here. But I’m out of the worst of it now. I’ll be there in a few,” I fabricated on the spot. I could hear the shakiness in my own voice and wondered if Sidney could tell as well. I got off the phone as quickly as I could. It was a damn good thing Sidney was an older man, who was secure and not the type who sweated my every move. A younger street dude might’ve asked way more questions about why I’d been so late before so readily taking my word for it.

  “Okay, Gigi. Get your shit together and go see your man. You can deal with what’s to come later,” I pep talked myself as I pulled my car back onto the road. I couldn’t help finding myself lost deep in thought about what might come of Warren knowing that I had run my ass from DC to Virginia. I also thought about my life in DC and my new life in Virginia. The differences were very clear to me.

  I must admit, when I first met Sidney, I wasn’t all that attracted to him. My first impression at a glance was that he was an old man trying to get his swerve on with a younger woman to recapture his youth. He was already balding and graying, even in his beard. I have to say, though, he was well dressed in the older man sense. He was smooth enough with his approach, too; but what really caught my eye was the Presidential Rolex gleaming from Sidney’s wrist. I was all eyes and ears once I saw that. His very pregnant wallet was also something I remember being an eye-catcher to me at that time. Sidney was more low key than I ever remember Warren being, and that made me say maybe I should give this man a try.

  I did and it led us to marriage really fast. We didn’t date much at all. Sidney asked me to marry him and said something like, “I’m supposed to watch over you til death do us part . . . be my wife.” I had been so hard up for money after burning up all my money that he could’ve said anything and I would’ve probably said yes at that time. Married, nice life, and all of the luxury things I wanted. The fact still remained that when I did the comparison of my men, you would know that Sidney could never compare to Warren in certain areas and vice versa. One was young, all about that street life, and could lay the pipe like a fucking expert. The other was older, all about building a real wealthy lifestyle, and was less than amusing in the bed. But he made up for it with how he gave me everything in the world. If I had to stand them side by side, there would be drastic differences that made each of them invaluable in their own right. Warren was thirty-three years old, stood six feet three inches, had six-pack abs, round, deep-set eyes, and deep chocolate skin. Warren dressed like a street dude, donning the latest premium denim and high-end sneakers that hit the stores before anyone else in the hood could even dream about it. Sidney, on the other hand, was forty-five years old, stood a mere five feet nine inches, had a small, protruding gut, high yellow skin, salt and pepper hair, and little beady eyes that weren’t readily attractive. Sidney was older, more distinguished, and he dressed like it. He always wore dress pants; albeit tailor-made, they were still dress pants. He preferred Ferragamo loafers and hard-bottom gators over any other footwear. French cuff shirts were t
he order of the day whenever Sidney went out to conduct business. Just like there were definitely stark differences between the two men, so was the life I had had with each.

  When I was with Warren, I was always on edge about other bitches. Warren had cheated a few times to say the least. I also never knew if I would get a call saying he was dead or had been arrested for some shit, so whenever he was in the streets and my cell phone rang, it sent a sense of dread through me. Life with Warren was always an adventure. I never knew what any given day would hold whether it was shopping trips, wild parties, or a day of straight animalistic sex from sunup until sundown. Most of the things Warren bought me were hood rich shit, like Gucci bags, the latest True Religion or Seven for All Mankind jeans, and shit that chicks in the hood saved up their pennies to get. Warren had brought me up from the streets, so for a while I felt a sense of loyalty toward him. Life with Sidney was routine, predictable, and some days even mundane. He went to run his businesses or on business trips and I played the role of kept woman. I didn’t ever have to worry about another woman calling me. My cell phone rang at the same time every day with the same call from Sidney. I tried to do spontaneous things like the lunch surprise today, but I knew it kind of made Sidney uncomfortable. Sex with him was blah, mundane. I always tried to spice it up, but as long as I couldn’t buy him a new dick, it would still be the same. Sidney’s wealth allowed me to shop for things I’m sure girls from my old neighborhood had never experienced. When I got with him, it was all Akris, Celine, and Hermes bags, clothes from Thakoon, Diane Von Fürstenberg, and shoes from Christian Louboutin and 3.1 Phillip Lim. Grown folks shit. After getting with Sidney, I also had the pleasure of having my name added to those special black lists in all of the designer shops. Those snooty-ass stores would’ve never allowed Warren to add his name to those lists no matter how much drug and gun money that nigga had.