by Zaire Crown
The Uber driver met them in the parking lot of a Comerica bank. DelRay directed him to his house so he could pick up his second car, and once in the Benz, Tuesday directed DelRay to the house in Romulus so she could pick up her family.
Tuesday stressed the need for speed. If La Guapa knew she was in Detroit, Tuesday feared she might also know about Marcus’s old place. DelRay wasn’t trying to get pulled over but did outpace the freeway traffic by fifteen miles an hour.
On the way, she called Brandon to tell him about Reina’s latest move. Tuesday explained how this was not like the other times when she felt La Guapa was just toying with her; this was an actual attempt on her life. Brandon said he couldn’t imagine that Reina had found any way to break the trust Marcus set up, but agreed with moving the girls to a hotel just in case they were no longer protected.
Tuesday also told him about the deal she made with Madame Vega. Brandon expressed some dissatisfaction at the price but claimed it would take at least twenty-four hours to put together ten million in cash. He called for the return of the company jet with the promise to deliver the money by it when the funds were ready.
Tuesday had kept Shaun and the girls squatting like vagrants, living out of shopping bags. All of Marcus’s old furniture was still there although coated with three years’ worth of dust. It surprised Tuesday to find the utilities still active.
The moment she limped through the door in dirty denim and tangled weave, Shaun was all over her playing Momma. “Where you been? What the hell happened to you?”
Tuesday pushed past as Shaun tried to pick tiny glass shards from her hair. “Get the food while I get the girls ready. We gotta leave.”
Shaun seemed to be waiting for an explanation about Tuesday’s appearance or the six-foot-nine behemoth who accompanied her. She received none.
Tanisha clung to Tuesday’s leg, staring up at DelRay like he was some monster that crawled from underneath the bed to devour children.
“Ni Ni, get your coat. We gotta’ go, okay?”
When she didn’t respond fast enough, Tuesday impatiently snapped her fingers to get her daughter’s attention. “Hey, I said get yo’ coat.” She turned back to Shaun. “Where’s Dani?”
Shaun indicated upstairs so Tuesday took the steps gingerly on her bad leg then leaned against the doorway of Danielle’s old room.
“Hurry up and grab your stuff. We gotta’ go.”
Danielle was seated on the bed, her phone the only entertainment. She issued an annoyed grunt but didn’t move.
Tuesday frowned at her. “What part of that didn’t you understand? Grab yo’ stuff. We gotta go. Now.”
“Why do we have to keep moving around? Why are we back at the old house and where’s my daddy?”
In all the craziness that followed the fire, Tuesday never had the opportunity to explain Marcus to their daughters. In being truthful with herself she had avoided it, and the shuffling from place to place had only helped to distract the girls.
“Look, we ain’t got time for that right now.” Tuesday moved around the room and began stuffing things into a plastic bag.
Danielle stood defiantly. “I wanna know where my daddy at. I ain’t going nowhere else ’til you tell me. I know something bad happened. You think I’m a stupid little kid, but I’m probably smarter than you.”
Tuesday paused and drew upon all the strength she had not to put hands on the child. “You think you grown now ‘cause you can do big math problems and quote Shakespeare? You don’t know shit about the stuff that really matter.
“But if you want the grownup version of the truth, here it is: Daddy gave his life for that stupid company—not for me, not for you or Ni Ni, but that damn company. And now it’s up to me to keep y’all, and it, safe, but every day I feel like a bigger fool for not just taking the money.”
Danielle shrieked, “I just wanna go home! I wanna go back to school!”
Tuesday shot back. “You think I want this? I never signed up for any of this either. You ain’t got no home—all you got is me. People are trying to hurt us, Dani, and I’m all you got protecting you. Not Daddy, me!”
Tuesday immediately felt like shit and expected to see Danielle’s eyes tear up. However, the nine-year-old actually demonstrated a lot more maturity than she had.
She said, “My daddy’ll come back and he’ll fix everything. Just watch.”
Tuesday didn’t argue with her. She had carried that same denial for weeks and would allow Danielle to come to terms in her own time.
They piled into DelRay’s Benz and drove to a Residence Inn three miles away from the house. Tuesday had Shaun check them in under an alias.
DelRay admired her form as Shaun walked to the front desk. He leaned into Tuesday’s ear. “What’s up with old girl fine ass?”
Tuesday only said, “Long story.”
The rooms were designed like small apartments with a living area, two bedrooms and a kitchenette. Tuesday didn’t know how long they would be stuck there, so DelRay took her to a nearby store for more food and toiletries.
There was a little drama at the checkout when Tabitha King’s American Express was declined but Tuesday decided it might be safer to pay cash anyway just in case La Guapa was somehow tracking her credit.
Next they swung by a Coney Island on the way back to the motel and Tuesday was stuffing chili-fries into her mouth when she noticed DelRay looking at her sideways.
“You done damn near got me killed twice. Don’t you think it’s time you told me what the fuck up with this Gaucho chick?”
“Guapa!” Tuesday said through a mouth full of potato and cheese. “I guess it mean ‘pretty muthafucka’ in Spanish.”
Tuesday pulled up the Facebook page for Reina Rodriguez using his phone. She passed it back to DelRay and rolled her eyes when the photos contorted his chubby face into a Damn! expression.
“If Alicia Keys could get Beyoncé pregnant, their baby wouldn’t have shit on her.”
Tuesday sucked her teeth.
“Child prodigy; 197 I.Q.; earned two Ph.Ds. before turning twenty-five.” DelRay quoted from her profile. “Father was a wealthy immigrant entrepreneur.”
“Drug lord,” Tuesday corrected. “And now she’s running his business.” Tuesday explained how her husband left Abel to her and why Reina wanted it.
“How in the fuck did she do that? I didn’t even know we’d be on Greenfield and Chicago, so how could she know exactly where we was at?”
Tuesday shrugged nonchalantly while attacking her burger. “She real good at setting traps and shit.”
DelRay slumped in his seat, expelled a heavy breath. “Boss Lady, you know I love you to death but the shit you got goin’ on is way above my level. I’m a big nigga who can handle myself on these streets—but damn! You fuckin’ with evil geniuses and trained killers. You need somebody having you back that’s better than me. I’m a bouncer; you need a goon.”
“I need two hundred of ’em,” she snapped.
DelRay tucked his phone. “That’s out of my reach, but I might be able to point you to one helluva hitter. Probably the best. The nigga good with his hands, guns, explosives—they say he like a black Jason Bourne.”
They stopped by the hotel room just long enough to drop off the fast food and groceries. After blowing another blunt in the parking lot, they headed back to the city with DelRay promising Tuesday a surprise.
She asked, “We on our way to meet Supernigga?”
“I’m gone get on that for you later, but first I wanna show you something.”
Tuesday screwed up her face. “The weed already got me noid, nigga. I don’t like this shit.”
DelRay drove for half an hour before coming to a large Baptist church on the north end of Detroit. He slipped around to the rear parking lot where volunteer parishioners in matching purple T-shirts loaded donations onto a fleet of cargo vans.
She cut her eyes at DelRay as he threw the car in park. “I don’t think Jesus can help with the shit I’m dea
ling with.”
He sent a quick text. “Wait a minute. I wouldn’t bring you all this way for nothing. You gone love me for this.”
Just then a dark-skinned man about six-foot-three stepped into the afternoon sun wearing a Tiger’s hat and carrying a box under each muscular arm. He dropped them into a van then retrieved his phone from his Dickie’s cargo pants. He read the message and scanned around curiously until he spotted DelRay’s hand waving him over from the open window.
Tuesday recognized that walk, and as he drew near her throat went dry. The Coney Island suddenly felt sour in her stomach and the temperature in the Mercedes seemed to jump thirty degrees.
By the time he reached the car, Tuesday couldn’t breathe and thought she was about to faint. He peeked in on her from DelRay’s window. Even when he took off his baseball cap to give her a clear view of his face, Tuesday still couldn’t believe it was him.
After his initial look of shock, he flashed a smile lined with straight white teeth. “What’s up wit’ you Bright Eyes?”
Tuesday threw open her car door to vomit on the pavement.
Chapter Thirty-three
Once her stomach settled, Tuesday scrambled around the front of the car and dove into his arms. A.D. wrapped her up tight, lifted her a bit and just smothered her with his chest. It felt surreal; she couldn’t believe it was actually him, that he was actually there. She couldn’t believe that after all those years, being in his arms still felt like home.
She pulled back, didn’t even realize she was crying until he wiped a tear from her cheek. “You?”
He gave a slow nod. Tuesday had to touch his face, needed one of her other senses to confirm the report of her eyes.
“When?”
He said, “’Bout eight months ago.”
“How?” Her mind was so blown that all she could formulate were one-word questions.
“By the grace of God,” he said with a slight laugh. “I thought I was done, had exhausted all my remedies. Then out of the blue this lawyer comes to see me who wants to take on my case for free. He specializes in Constitutional violations, says the judge screwed me over when he never instructed the jury on any lesser charges. I got a new trial and Murder in the First Degree got dropped to Manslaughter One.
“I still got found guilty but Man One only carries a fifteen-year maximum sentence and I already had sixteen years in. Since it was past my release date, I didn’t even have to go back to prison. I got processed right there and walked out of the county jail a few hours later.”
Tuesday was struck dumb. The last time she had seen A.D. was in the visiting room at Ryan Road Correctional. She had rode with him for the first twelve years of a Life bid, but when his final appeal was denied, he broke off their relationship. He explained that it was too hard to do his time trying to hold on to her and asked her not to write or come see him again. They both were resigned to his fate, yet there he stood with no bars or unbreakable glass separating them. Tuesday looked at him mesmerized.
“Damn, you lookin’ good.”
His voice was a hot whisper that made her blush.
It also made her aware that he was being generous, because Tuesday knew she looked a mess. Her Fendi outfit was still covered in dirt, her hair a bird’s nest from being pulled by Vega’s son, and she was walking with a limp. Every day of her life she’d been so fresh and so clean, but on this, of all days, she would run into her ex looking like the bitch on WorldStar who lost the fight.
But to Tuesday he looked good enough to eat. His gear was cheap but crisp. Prison had preserved him; A.D. was a few years older than her but could easily pass for twenty-seven. He looked healthy and strong, added close to one hundred pounds of muscle to his lean frame. His hair was a low Caesar with thick waves spiraling in three hundred and sixty degrees. Staring at him made Tuesday’s heart hammer in her chest as if eager to escape and return to its original owner.
“Ain’t no fuckin’ on church grounds!” DelRay interrupted their staring contest. She was so lost in A.D. that she had forgotten Fatboy was sitting in the car three feet from them.
“You knew this nigga was home. I been with you the whole day and you ain’t said shit.” She reached into the window and pushed his big head.
A.D. asked, “So where ya’ been at, stranger? I get out, the club is closed and you in the wind.”
“L.A. Things got super-hectic with the last lick. So much that I had to bust up from the D.”
“I got bits and pieces of it from the streets but nobody really knew what went down. I was sorry to hear about Tushie, though. I know she was like a sister.”
Tuesday shook her head. “Not like a sister. A sister.”
“So I’m guessing congratulations are in order.”
Tuesday didn’t understand what he meant until she caught A.D. eyeing her ring. He teased, “Can we go skating on that later?”
Tuesday tucked her hand at her side, suddenly embarrassed by the massive diamond she usually wore so proudly.
“It’s clear he’s a rich man but is he a good one?”
“He’s a complicated man. A man who sometimes does the wrong things for the right reasons.” She gave A.D. a knowing look. “I guess I got a type.”
He laughed and threw up his hands in surrender. “Okay, shots fired.”
She asked, “And what about you? What does your type look like these days?”
He offered a nervous smile, tugged at his left ear. She recalled him always doing that when he was uncomfortable. “I got a little situation that I’ve been dealing with for a minute. We met right after I came home. She’s a good girl—keeps me grounded.”
She had married Marcus and had his baby so she had no reason to feel jealous, but part of her still did. Their love had spanned eighteen years, so on some purely selfish level she felt like A.D. would always belong to her.
Tuesday didn’t trip though, kept her game-face on and congratulated him on finding somebody.
They spent a few more minutes catching up when DelRay got an important text and A.D. had to return to work. Tuesday took his number, but since she had trashed her phone, she gave him the number to the one she intended to buy. They agreed to get together as friends but shared an embrace that lasted too long to be friendly.
As DelRay pulled off, Tuesday couldn’t stop glancing back at the church.
“Didn’t I say you was gone love me for this?”
She nodded. “Yeah, that was a helluva surprise. I cain’t believe that nigga home.”
“Remember that li’l thing we used to do at The Bounce, how when I won a bet or did something good I got to smack dat fat ass?”
She cut her eyes at DelRay who was smiling like a kid.
“I’m just sayin’, that’s gotta be worth like twenty good ones.”
“You got your own club now with a hundred different asses you can slap all you want. How after all this time you still so obsessed with mine?”
DelRay stroked his chin as if giving that serious thought. “I might need to see a therapist.
“On some real shit, Boss Lady.” Tuesday no longer heard humor in his voice. “I thought you might need that pick-me-up after everything you been through.”
She agreed. “Did help to take my mind off shit. He looked good but he seemed different though. His swag was off, and I don’t know what’s up with the church thing.”
DelRay waved it off. “That’s just how niggas be when they first get out. They be a little shook, all on that good-brother shit ’til the streets wash it off. Then they be right back to doing them.”
Tuesday nodded, but didn’t necessarily agree. It wasn’t just that A.D. sounded different, she noticed a different look in his eye. His energy had changed.
DelRay said, “While you was catching up with your boy I was shooting out texts trying to catch up with the goon. That’s who hit me up. He wanna meet and talking ’bout bring cash. You ready to do that?”
Tuesday said, “Let’s get it.”
As DelRay pu
shed the Benz back towards the Westside, Tuesday was hopeful that finally something was about to go her way.
Chapter Thirty-four
“They call him Silence and word is he ain’t got no gang or crew affiliations,” explained DelRay. “He a hired goon, a street mercenary who put in work for whoever holding his lease. It might be red one week, blue the next week—all he care about is the green.”
They waited in the stall of a coin car wash on Telegraph Road. DelRay vacuumed the interior of his S550 just so they wouldn’t look suspicious.
Tuesday leaned against the hood, staring across the street at a motel that held history for her. She had been raped in one of its rooms but later in that same room had also brutally mutilated the dirty cop who violated her. She revisited those memories, listening absently as DelRay spoke.
He continued. “They say he don’t work cheap but he worth the money.”
“Well he need to get his ass here. In the corporate world you cain’t be showing up twenty minutes late. Shit ain’t professional.”
DelRay was cleaning the trunk. “You know you sound bougie as hell right now.”
While they waited, Tuesday thought back on the conversation with Danielle and wished she had handled that better. Some part of her had always known she would fail at motherhood because she had been failed by her own mother. Between the new job, baby Tanisha, and then creeping with Shaun, Danielle had been getting lost in the shuffle. Tuesday remembered her mother always chasing after the next new boyfriend rather than spending time with her.
She also took a page out of her mother’s playbook by going in on Marcus—a bad look to put down a father to his daughter. Tuesday didn’t realize until then how much trouble she was having accepting what he had done. Brandon kept trying to convince her that he’d done an honorable thing but she didn’t see him as a martyr who gave his life to protect his family. To her, Marcus had basically committed suicide and Tuesday saw no honor in that.