by Kiki Swinson
As soon as she unlocked the front door and pushed it open, I zoomed in on her at first sight. She was pretty, like La La Anthony, and petite, like Jada Pinkett Smith. She was definitely an eye catcher. “Hi.” I smiled and spoke to her first.
“Hi,” she spoke back as she took off her jacket and hung it up on a coatrack next to the front door. She hung the straps of her purse there too.
“Why you home so early? I thought you had to work late tonight,” Carl Jr. asked her.
“I got Tammy to come in and take over my shift,” she replied, looking at him. And then she looked around the entire room.
“What’s good, Sabrina?” Rich smiled at her.
“Everything is good. What’s going on in here?” she wanted to know as she closed the door and locked it.
“We’re just in here reminiscing about old times,” Carl Jr. lied.
I don’t know how he came up with that lie that quick. I did know that if she believed it, then he was bad, man.
“And who is she?” She continued to hurl her questions in the air.
“I’m Misty,” I said, making the introduction.
“Wait, isn’t she your father’s girlfriend’s daughter?”
“Yes, I am,” I answered before anyone in the room could.
“You were on the news tonight too, right?”
I hesitated for a second and then I said, “Yeah, I was.” “So, what brings you here?” She wasn’t letting up. She was going to ask me as many questions as she wanted to, and if I decided that I didn’t want to answer them, then I could definitely see her throwing me out of her house.
“She came here to let us know where our daddy is,” Carl Jr. spoke up.
“Well, where is he?” she asked Carl Jr.
“Some mafia guys,” he replied.
“And how do you guys know that?” she asked, this time looking directly at me.
“The same guys got her mama,” Carl Jr. answered.
“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to her. So let her answer,” the girlfriend replied impatiently. The way she looked at me, I knew she wasn’t liking me at all.
“Because I used to work for those guys and I heard things,” I told her in a nice and respectful manner. As badly as I wanted to curse her ass out, I didn’t. I knew that it wouldn’t be the greatest idea, considering that I was at everyone’s mercy. I needed shelter. And I needed a team of street dudes to help me rescue my mother, even if it meant that I would have to trade my life for hers. Doing it alone wasn’t an option.
Sabrina took a seat on the couch next to me. But she was on the far left side of me. “Do you know why those guys got your mother and their father?” She directed more questions to me.
“If I get into that, we’ll be here for the rest of the night,” I responded, because I really was not interested in repeating everything, I had just told the guys.
“I got all night,” she told me.
“Come on, Sabrina, we don’t have time for that,” Carl Jr. interjected.
“Why not? I wanna know if she’s bringing drama to my household. Now, am I wrong for that?”
I stood up to my feet. “I’m sorry. I swear, bringing drama to this house was the last thing on my mind. I just came here to tell the guys I know where their father was. That’s it.”
“You could’ve called them and told them that,” she continued.
“I didn’t have their number,” I said, and started making my way toward the front door. “Are you ready?” I asked Rich.
“Yep, let’s go,” he said, and then he pointed to his homeboy and told him to open the door.
“Me and you are going to have a heart-to-heart,” I heard her warn Carl Jr. while we were walking out of the house.
“Look, I’m not going to be arguing with you tonight. I’m not in the mood.”
“I don’t wanna argue either. But you’re gonna tell me why she was in our house. Remember, you just got out of jail not too long ago.” She didn’t back down.
I didn’t hear Carl Jr.’s rebuttal; Rich had closed the front door behind us. But after we got into the car, I made mention of it. “Is she always like that?” I asked Rich.
“Yeah, she’s got a lot of mouth. I couldn’t deal with her shit. I would’ve kicked her ass out of my house a long time ago,” Rich commented after he climbed into the passenger-side seat, while his homeboy climbed into the driver’s seat. After he put the key into the ignition, he put the gear in Drive and sped off down the one-way street.
“So that’s his house?” I asked after him while I looked at my surroundings. It had just hit me that we left using the front door. I looked over my shoulders and through the back window to see if we were being followed.
“It’s my dad’s house. But he let me and my brother stay there after he started dating and moved into your mom’s crib. The house is paid for. All we gotta pay are the taxes, utilities, and the cable bill.”
“If your dad left the house to you and Carl Jr., then why aren’t you there?”
“Because I hustle and sell drugs. And I can’t disrespect my pops by bringing that shit to his crib. He worked hard for that spot, so I’m gonna treat it like he does. You understand?”
“I sure do,” I replied, still looking over my shoulders with every left and right turn the big guy made.
“So let me ask you something,” Rich said.
“What’s up?”
“What were you going to do if me or my brother would not have helped you?”
“That’s a good question. But I don’t know what I would’ve done.”
“So, is it true that your cousin and Tedo would’ve struck gold if they would’ve gotten away free and clear?”
“What do you mean?” I asked him.
“How much would they have made if they got away with all those pills?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a couple of hundred grand,” I lied. I figured if I told him that the street value of that robbery would’ve been over a million dollars, he’d probably go into this thing thinking he could get something close to that. I didn’t need that headache. I mean, he already told me that if I didn’t help him with this robbery, then he wasn’t going to help me get my mother back. He was a fucking moron, and I hoped he didn’t bite off more than he could chew. Whether he knew it or not, I was going to devise my own plan for my mother after he got me inside. After that, he and his crew would be on their own.
Rich got excited and turned around in the seat and faced me. “You gotta be shittin’ me! Two hundred grand? And Tedo and that other nigga fucked that up? Shit! If it was me, I would’ve come out of that spot with every pill they had, and I wouldn’t have left any witnesses. Everybody in that joint would’ve gotten spread.”
“Yeah, right,” I mumbled. Listening to this fool hype himself up like he’s Scarface was a joke.
“Where did you say that restaurant was?” Rich changed the direction of the conversation.
“It’s right around the corner from JANAF,” I told him.
“Come on, Mike, let’s head down there,” Rich instructed his big friend.
“I’m on it, boss,” Rich’s flunky said.
Mike made his way onto Princess Anne Road and then he took it all the way up to the intersection of Military Highway. After he made a right turn, he drove another two miles and there we parked fifty feet away from the Indian restaurant. “Pull into that parking lot over there,” Rich instructed Mike as he pointed to a parking lot in front of the restaurant.
While Mike headed into the parking lot, I looked at the parking lot of the restaurant and noticed that there were only a few cars parked in front of it. It was close to closing time, so I knew that a couple of those cars were patrons.
“Do any of those cars look familiar?” Rich asked me.
“Those cars that are parked in front of the restaurant belong to customers. The family that owns the restaurant park their cars on the side of the building,” I told him, and then I turned my focus on every angle around the vicin
ity. I knew the DEA agents were watching this place, so I had to make sure they weren’t tucked somewhere in the background, watching the car I was in.
I think I looked over my shoulders at least twenty times just to make sure. I knew one thing, for sure, if the agents were watching this car too, they were doing a helluva job. I couldn’t find their cars nowhere in sight.
“Do they have a lot of traffic going in there?”
“Yeah, every time I went there to eat, they were always packed with customers.”
“Do you know how many family members work there?”
“It varies. Sometimes seven. Other times ten.”
“Think they sell the pills there too?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’cha think, Mike? Think they sell their pills wholesale out of there?” Rich asked him.
“I know I would, especially if I had a legit restaurant.”
“Yeah, me too. Having that restaurant is a nice cover-up,” Rich added.
“I think so too,” Mike agreed.
“A’ight, so this is what we’re going to do. We’re gonna sit out here and wait for those motherfuckers to come out of there so we can see how many of them work the late shift. Then we’re gonna follow them to their crib so we can find out where they live. After we accomplish that, we’ll put our plan together,” he said with finality.
At this point, there was really nothing else to say to Rich. Listening to his plan made me believe that he was more concerned about robbing those guys than trying to rescue our parents. In his conversation, he said absolutely nothing about how he planned to save his father. All Rich saw right now was how he was going to make off with a bunch of money so he could go and fuck it up to buy weed, bottles of champagne, and stripper bitches. That was it. This further gave me the drive to come up with my own plan. My mother was all I had left, and I would do anything to make sure she didn’t suffer for my mistakes.
19
MY LIFE FOR YOURS
Rich made Mike and me sit out in the parking lot for over an hour while we waited for those people to come out of the restaurant and get into their cars. Five people, in all, came outside. Rich seemed excited about it. “I thought you said about seven to ten people work there?” Rich asked me.
“They do.”
“Well, it looks like five people just came out of there.”
“Maybe someone left right before we got here,” I tried to rationalize.
“If I’m gonna rob this place, I’m gonna need the right numbers,” he said, sounding like he was getting agitated.
“Things change all the time. So, why don’t you plan to run into seven guys instead of five. I mean, it’s better to plan for more than the other way around?” I responded sarcastically.
“Look, I don’t need you telling me how to do my shit! So sit back and only speak when I ask you a question,” he shot back.
I could tell that this guy wasn’t woman-friendly at all. He was a fucking bully. And the longer I was around this nigga, I knew things were going to get a little heated. It was time for me to make an exit plan. This Rich guy was worse than I had expected.
“Come on, let’s go,” Rich instructed Mike.
Mike backed out of the parking spot and followed two cars to Highway 264, which was only one mile away. As soon as they approached the ramp, one car took the ramp, while the other one decided to take the far left to travel north of the ramp. Mike looked at Rich for direction. “Which one do you want me to follow?” he wanted to know.
“Follow the guy who’s traveling alone.”
“Why not follow the other car? There are four people in there, so you know that they’re going home,” I wondered aloud.
“Because that car had a woman in it, and no mafia-type family is going to have their women around anything illegal. They need her to cook, clean, and take care of the kids. That guy who’s alone is going somewhere he didn’t want that woman to see.”
“If you say so,” I said, and let out a long sigh.
Mike followed the guy who was in the car alone. He managed to tail the guy for three miles down South Military Highway without being detected. While he kept his eye on the guy in the car in front of us, I kept my eyes on everything around me. For all I knew, the agents could be following the guy in front of us too. Or even worse, they could be following us because we’re following him. Well, after looking over my shoulders at least two dozen times, it looked as though no one was following us or the guy in front of us either. I felt relieved.
The guy driving ahead of us finally ended up taking us to a house in the Greenbrier, off Volvo Parkway. A lot of doctors, lawyers, and hedge fund executives lived in this waterfront community. The homes in this area ran you from $750,000 to $1,250,000. A golf club and boat lifts were all inclusive.
Rich and I watched the guy drive his vehicle into the garage. A few seconds later, the garage door closed. Mike parked the car at the corner of the guy’s block, so his home was in full view. “That’s a big-ass house he lives in, huh?” Rich said.
“Damn right. That shit is huge. I know it’s gotta be worth one million,” Mike commented.
“If he lives in a house like that, they gotta be worth double that,” Rich pointed out.
“Think they may have drugs in there?” Mike said aloud, giving me or Rich a chance to answer him.
“They might. You can never tell with people like that. I mean, they ain’t street people like us. You know that we’ll hide drugs anywhere,” Rich spoke up.
“You damn right. It’s called survival of the fittest,” Mike commented.
“Think we should go and check the layout? Maybe walk around the back of the house. See if there is another way to get in when we start making our plans?” I suggested.
“No. That’s too risky. We know where the guy lives, so we’ll come back,” Rich replied.
“But what if it’s too late? What if this is the last night that our family will take their last breath? What if they are trying to get in touch with us now so we can pay their ransom?” I asked, tossing out every scenario.
“Look, homegirl, I know you miss your mama, because I miss my pops, but we can’t go into those people’s house like we run shit. We gotta come up with a plan. Because when I go in there, I’m coming out with everything I want, because I’m not going back.”
“But what about my mother and your father? It seems like all you care about is robbing these people. When you talk about these people, the first thing that comes out of your mouth is that you want to rob them. Saving our parents from them is the furthest thing from your mind.” This guy was truly annoying me. And from his facial expression, I was sure he was about to let me have it. So I braced myself and listened to what he had to say.
He turned around in his seat and gritted on me really hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if his blood was boiling. “First of all, you don’t know me. All you know was that Carl Sr. is my daddy. So, homegirl, when you step to me, come at me with some facts and some respect. Because if you don’t, I’ll show you a side of me that you’ll never want to see again. Got it?”
“Yeah, got it,” I replied nonchalantly. Because in reality, I couldn’t care less about what he was talking about. Okay, he might be a street thug, and I was sure he had beaten up a lot of people and maybe even shot someone, but I couldn’t focus on that right now. My main focus was to get my mother back. But since he made it clear that we were not doing any surveillance work tonight, I could do nothing but roll with it and pray that my mother would be all right until I could rescue her.
“Let’s get out of here,” Rich instructed.
“I’m on it,” Mike said, and sped off.
* * *
En route to Rich’s trap house, we stopped at the 7-Eleven located at the corner of Military Highway and Indian River Road. After Mike pulled into a parking space, he and Rich went into the store. Mind you, neither one of them asked me if I wanted something while they were in there, so I was really pissed off about that. But
nothing prepared me for when I looked around to the left side of the car and noticed a government agent’s car parked three cars over from the car I was in. The car was a dark gray Ford sedan with tinted windows. I couldn’t see into the car, but I saw a silhouette of a man sitting in the driver’s seat of the vehicle. With my heart racing at an uncontrollable speed, I turned my head slowly to the left. Every few seconds, I’d look through the front windshield of the car, hoping that these dudes would hurry up and get in the car so we could leave.
“Please come on,” I said, even though I knew they couldn’t hear me.
After a few more minutes, Mike came and got into the car first. Rich came and got into the car one minute later, carrying a pack of Oreo cookies, a six-pack of Bud Light, and four lottery tickets.
“I gonna win tonight, nigga!” Rich said cheerfully.
“You say that shit every time you buy tickets,” Mike joked.
“Nigga, laugh all you want. When I do win, don’t come smiling in my face, talking about ‘Man, what’s up? You gon’ look out for me.’ ’Cause I’m gon’ tell you to haul ass!” Rich joked back.
While all of this was going on, I noticed the agent looking over at this car. Mike noticed it too when he backed out of his parking space. “See narcos watching us?” he asked Rich.
Rich turned around slowly and got a glimpse of the agent looking at us. Luckily for me, I couldn’t be seen in the back seat. So my only hope was that these guys weren’t carrying a gun or drugs, because if they were, they’d get arrested and I’d be hauled into the DEA office with a set of shiny handcuffs.
“Can you see how many in the car?” Rich asked both Mike and myself.
“It only looks like one,” I said, and as soon as I said it, another agent emerged from the 7-Eleven. I didn’t recognize the face. And as bad as I wanted to let out a sigh of relief, I knew I couldn’t. I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“See that one coming out of the store?” Rich mentioned.
“Yeah, I see ’em,” Mike replied while he backed the car in reverse.
“Have you ever seen him before?”
“Nah, I don’t know who he is,” Mike told him.