by Kiki Swinson
“What kind of trade?”
“Your life for hers.”
“Let’s do it,” I said without hesitation.
“You do know I’m gonna kill you slow, right?”
“Okay what you do to me, to let my mother go, so we can even the score.”
“When?”
“I’ll call you back with that information. But before I call you back, I need proof of life. Where is she? I need to hear her voice,” I told him.
“Hold on a minute,” he said, and then I heard complete silence. No movement. No talking. Nothing. But then a couple of seconds later, I heard someone fidgeting with the phone. “Hello,” I heard a tiny voice say.
Just like that, it felt like fireworks exploded inside of me. For the moment, I began to feel excited, because I knew my mother was on the other end of the line. “Mom, is that you?” I said anxiously.
“Yes, baby, it’s me. Where are you?” she wanted to know. But before I could answer that question, Ahmad took the phone away from her. “That’s enough. You know she’s alive. Let’s make the trade now,” he said with finality.
“I will call you back with that information.”
“Don’t take too long, because as you know, the DEA is closely watching my family. And if they decide to intervene in this thing between you and me, then I’m going to kill her, and no one will ever find me. Understood?”
“Yeah, I understand. But you better keep your word, or I’m gonna have my mother’s boyfriend’s son and his friends kill some of the innocent people in your family. Now, do you understand where I am coming from?”
“I don’t like threats, Ms. Misty.”
“I don’t like them either. So stay by the phone and I’ll call you back by noon tomorrow.”
“I’ll be waiting,” he assured me.
Knock! Knock! Knock! Startled, I fumbled with the cell phone in my hand and almost dropped it. “Yo, what’cha doing in there?” I heard Rich ask from the other side of the bathroom door.
“I’m using the bathroom,” I replied as I powered the phone off and shoved it down into the back pocket of my pants.
“Hurry up. I gotta pee,” he told me.
“Okay, I’m coming,” I told him, and then I flushed the toilet like I had just used it. I turned on the faucet water too, to pretend like I was washing my hands. I turned the faucet off and then I opened the door. Rich was front and center when I laid eyes on him.
“Can you get the fuck out of my way?” he said impatiently.
“Sure. No problem,” I replied, and moved out of his way.
While he handled his business in the bathroom, I headed back downstairs. When I stepped foot back in the front room, I looked at the front door. Something inside of me wanted to leave this place and not look back. But then I figured that if I left, I wouldn’t have the backup I needed to help me get my mother back. Ahmad would kill both my mother and myself if I came for her alone, and I couldn’t have that. Not now. Not ever.
23
WALKING TWO STEPS AHEAD
I was shocked when Monty brought his dumb ass back to the house. Rich was standing at the front door serving one of his crackhead customers when Monty pulled up in his girlfriend’s car. “What’s going on with Mike? Is he going to be all right?” Rich didn’t hesitate to ask Monty after he stepped foot in the house.
“I don’t know. When I got to the emergency room, I helped him out of the car and walked him inside. When the nurse saw him bleeding, she got him a wheelchair and wheeled him back behind the double doors,” Monty explained.
“Was he still breathing?”
“Yeah, he was breathing. He was talking too. So I told him to hold on and that he was going to be all right,” Monty continued.
“As soon as the cops find out he’s been shot, you know they will show up and start asking him a whole bunch of questions.”
“You think he’s gonna snitch on me?” Monty sounded worried.
“Hell nah! What kind of nigga you think Mike is? That nigga is legit! I trust him with my life. Because he’s that type of dude!” Rich told Monty.
“Well, he sure didn’t act that way when he was takin’ up for that bitch right there.” Monty pointed at me.
“There you go with that bullshit again,” I commented. This guy had only been in the house for two minutes and he was talking about me already.
“Shut the fuck up! Ain’t nobody talking to you.” He gritted his teeth at me. His horns were flaring up again. Now, how would I handle this nigga if he decided he wanted to fight on me again? I couldn’t take too many beatings.
“Calm down, Monty. Let it go, man. We got other shit to do,” Rich spoke up. “You know they found my pops.” He changed the subject.
“Who found him?” Monty changed his tone.
“The police. The cats that got her mom killed my pops and dumped his body on the side of the road on Twenty-first Street.”
“You talked to the police?”
“Nah! But it was on the news. My brother called me and told me that the cops stopped by his place and told him.”
“Yo, dawg, that’s messed up. That shit makes me so mad that I want to go out there and kill those motherfuckers on sight,” Monty expressed.
“Me too. But we’ll get them, so don’t even worry.”
“Have you thought about when you’re trying to go to their spot?”
“I want to do it tomorrow night.”
“Since we ain’t got Mike, want me to bring in two more dudes? I could get Jason and my homeboy Paul to come with us.”
“I only need you and one more person, but hit ’em both up. Let ’em know what we’re trying to do and tell ’em we gonna do it tomorrow night.”
“A’ight. I’ma call ’em now,” Monty said, and then he pulled out his cell phone. He took a walk outside of the house and returned less than one minute later. Immediately after he closed the front door, he looked at Rich and said, “They’re in.”
“Good,” Rich said as he walked back into the kitchen. I watched him open the refrigerator and pull out a bottle of beer. “Want one?” he asked Monty.
“Nah, I’m good. I wanna talk about this job we getting ready to do,” Monty said as he walked into the kitchen behind Rich. He stood at the entryway of the kitchen and gave Rich his undivided attention.
“I want to rob the restaurant first. And before we leave, I wanna kill everybody in there except for one person, because that person will take us to their big house not too far from the restaurant.”
“Which house was that?”
“It’s a big-ass house down on Military Highway. That shit is big as hell. I know that gotta have a ton of money and drugs in that spot.”
“Well, you know I’m down. But what’cha gon’ do with her?” Monty asked Rich after he looked back at me.
“She’s going too.”
“What, we gon’ leave her in the car? ’Cause she might be a distraction when we go up in the restaurant,” Monty pointed out.
“Nah, she ain’t gonna be a distraction. She wanna get her mama out of there, so I’ma let her do it.”
“So you mean to tell me that you’re gonna help that bitch get her mama back?” Monty questioned Rich, sounding and looking like he had a bad taste in his mouth.
“I’m not helping her do shit. When she goes inside their spot, she’s on her own, ’cause I’m not giving her a burner and I’m not gonna watch her back. Like I said, when she goes in there, she’s on her own.”
“Sounds good to me,” Monty said, and then he started rubbing his hands together like he was about to eat a delicious piece of cake.
I swear, it took everything within me not to curse both of these niggas out. These two dudes were the most grimy and selfish niggas I knew. All they cared about was themselves.
* * *
I don’t know how I made it through the night. When I woke up the next morning, I noticed that I had fallen asleep on the couch and that I was all alone. That was until I heard the toilet fl
ush inside the bathroom upstairs. Not too long after, I got up and headed upstairs so I could use the bathroom myself. It only took me a matter of minutes to unload all the pee I had inside my bladder. As I exited the bathroom, it shocked me to run into a female companion of Rich’s. Surprisingly, she was a very pretty girl. She was about my height, but a tad bit smaller in weight. She kind of resembled the singer Keri Hilson. She smiled and said good morning; I said good morning too. And before we could exchange any more dialogue, Rich walked into the hallway, where we were standing. “She seems nice,” Kim said.
“Don’t let her fool you. She’s a real bitch when she wants to be,” Rich replied.
“I’m sure everybody can be that way,” I responded defiantly, and then I headed back downstairs.
He chuckled. “I told you,” he told her, and then I heard him walking down the staircase behind me.
I immediately started saying a quiet prayer, hoping he wasn’t following me to start up drama. All I needed was to stick around just a little bit longer so that I could get the details of Rich’s plans to rob Ahmad and the rest of his family. With his plans, I could come up with my own so I could rescue my mother in the process. That was it.
As soon as I made my way back downstairs, I sat on the couch, where I had slept just a few minutes ago. Rich, on the other hand, went into the kitchen, grabbed a container of orange juice, and started drinking out of it. When he was done, he put the container back into the refrigerator and headed back upstairs.
A few minutes later, I heard him and the girl arguing from one of the bedrooms. “I’m not leaving here until you give me my money!” I heard her shout.
“I told you, I’m not giving you no more money.”
“Yes, the fuck you are. You promised me,” she added.
“Well, I lied,” I heard him say.
“You know what, you ain’t shit! You just like all the rest of them niggas!” she spat out at him.
“Yeah, I heard that before.”
“Oh, so you think this shit is funny? I’ma call my cousin Reggie and he gon’ fuck you up,” she threatened him.
“Look, I ain’t trying to hear all that bullshit! Get your shoes and your bag and get the hell out,” I heard Rich snap. Seconds later, I heard a tad bit of scuffling.
“Get off of me.”
“I’ma get off of you when you get out of my house.”
“You think this is a house? This is a dump. A fucking trap house!” she shouted. I could tell that she was very angry with the way Rich was treating her. But how did she think he was going to treat her? He didn’t hide the fact that he was a disrespectful-ass loser. The whole world knew this. So why was she getting upset? He played her. Now she needed to get over it and keep it moving.
Rich and the girl argued for the next three minutes, if not more, and when he got tired of going back and forth with her, he ended up escorting her downstairs. When they entered into the front room, she looked at me and said, “Oh, I get it now. You’re trying to get rid of me so you can fuck her.”
“Oh no, ma’am. Trust me, it’s not that type of party,” I told her.
But she didn’t believe me. She continued to rant about how she knew that I was going to suck his dick, and how she knew that I was going to let him fuck me in my ass. But the kicker was when she said that while I was sucking his dick, he would be tasting my pussy. All I could do was shake my head. She was one delusional chick. Whether she knew it or not, I wouldn’t fuck or suck Rich’s dick for all the money in the world. Too bad, she wouldn’t believe it.
“She seemed really nice,” I said sarcastically after he closed the front door and locked it.
“Yep, just the marrying type,” he shot back, giving me just a tad more sarcasm as he walked right by me.
“Don’t forget to send me the invite,” I managed to say while he headed back upstairs. I thought he would have a rebuttal, but he didn’t.
While he was upstairs, doing God knows what, my stomach started growling like there was no tomorrow. I had a few dollars in my pocket, but going to the store wasn’t an option. I either would need Rich to make a trip for me, or he needed to get someone to bring food to me. Or if he had something in the refrigerator for me to eat, that would be better. And the only way I would know that would be to ask Rich. “Rich, do you have anything in here that I could eat?” I yelled from the front room.
“There’s some Frosted Flakes and milk in the refrigerator,” he yelled back.
“Can I get some?”
“I don’t give a fuck!” he shouted.
Instead of continuing the dialogue with this guy, I stood up from the couch and went into the kitchen. As I entered, I got an eyeful of dirty dishes in the sink, with mildew and old food stuck to the dishes. I saw a couple of roaches skittering around on the countertop, and when I opened the refrigerator and saw old and expired food inside of it, I immediately lost my appetite. There was no way in the world I was going to eat anything coming out of this kitchen. This place was a hazard to eat from, so I backed myself out of the kitchen and headed back into the front room. I figured I had been hungry for a few hours, so waiting another couple of hours wouldn’t hurt me.
After I sat down on the couch, I powered the TV back on. I sifted through the channels to see if I could find something good to watch, but it seemed like every program I ran across, I had already seen it. So I settled for 48 Hours on the ID channel. The show was about a missing twelve-year-old girl that went to school one morning and never came home. As the show was coming to an end, the investigators found out that the little girl’s uncle on her mother’s side had something to do with her disappearance. In fact, he had picked her up from school, took her out for ice cream, and then raped her in a hotel room. And to prevent her from telling what he had done, he strangled her until the last breath in her body. What a sick individual, that man was. She was such a beautiful and innocent little girl. And while I sat there, I wondered why people could kill other people so easily? Especially little innocent children that only wanted to do little kid things. If that guy had left her alone, she wouldn’t be dead. The same thing goes for my grandmother, my cousin, Mrs. Mabel, and Carl Sr. We live in a cruel world, and there was nothing we can do about it.
Five minutes into another TV show on the ID Channel, someone knocked on the front door. Rich rushed down the staircase and answered the door. When he realized that Monty was on the other side of the door, he opened it and let him in. “What’s good, dawg?” Monty said as they both did the handshake to the body dap.
“Trying to figure out how we gon’ do that job tonight,” Rich replied after he closed the front door shut.
“Trust me, it can’t be that hard. Remember, we’ve done a whole lot of robberies, so it can’t be any different from all the other ones.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Rich agreed.
Monty sat down on the sofa across from me, while Rich stood up and leaned against the wall next to the entryway of the kitchen. “Have you figured out what time we going?” Monty wanted to know.
“Yeah. We gonna go to the restaurant they own first. They close at ten o’clock tonight. So I want to run in there, right before they close. This way, we can wait until all the customers leave and then we got ’em.”
“Think they gonna have a lot of money in that joint?” Monty wanted clarity.
“They got to. It’s the weekend.”
“What if they don’t?”
“Don’t worry, they will. After we hit their restaurant, we gon’ kidnap one of the family members and make them take us to their house. They’re bound to have a lot of money there. Cats from outta the country don’t put all their money in the bank. They stash that shit in their houses. But what’s even better about the situation is that these motherfuckers sell drugs. So they gotta have a lot of dough stashed away in their crib. What drug dealers you know put that money in the bank?” Rich asked.
“Nobody I know.”
“My answer exactly.”
“Soun
ds like we gon’ be rolling in some serious cash later on tonight.”
“You damn right!” Rich commented while he rubbed his hands together.
I tried to pretend that I wasn’t listening to their conversation by not taking my eyes away from the television. Monty brought my name up in their discussion. “Misty, your face looks like shit!” he said like he was mocking me.
“If women-beating niggas like you would keep their hands to themselves, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Oh, so now I’m a woman beater?”
“I’m a woman, and you’re a beater, and when you put those two things together, you come up with a woman beater,” I stated, and then I turned my focus back toward the TV.
“See, this is why I need to get her in a room by myself. I would straighten her ass out. She’d be a model citizen, when I got through with her.”
“Come on, Monty, let’s chill out. We got bigger shit going on. So let’s stay focused,” Rich instructed. And thank God Monty listened, because I wouldn’t be able to handle another attack, especially the way they beat me the other night. All I could do right now was pray that God would be with me as I went through this journey tonight and then have my mother back in a safe place. That was all I cared about at this point. Nothing else.
24
STRAIGHT BULLSHIT
I don’t know where the time went. It went from sunlight to sundown in a matter of minutes, it seemed like. I was both nervous and anxious at the same time. While Rich and Monty relished the idea of robbing the Arabs for their drugs and money from their stash, I was thinking about how I was going to get my mother back and into a safe place. She was my main priority while I still had breath in my body.
An hour before we left the house, Rich and Monty and the two guys that Monty had recruited were all sitting at the kitchen table. They were suiting up and filling up the clips for their handguns for tonight’s robbery. I also listened to Rich give them last-minute instructions and plan B directions, just in case things went south. The two guys Monty brought into the fold were Jason and Paul. I knew Jason from the first night at the trap house, but this Paul fellow, he seemed like a hothead with no limits as to how far he would go. His entire conversation consisted of him bragging about how he was going to kill everyone in sight. And that included kids. He even boasted about how many bodies he laid to rest in the past two years. He talked so much that it was becoming unbearable to listen to him. Rich interrupted him, thank God, by announcing what the overall goal was. And how much time they had to do it. His plan seemed solid. But with any heist, something always seemed to go wrong. I just hoped they were ready for it, because it would happen.