Chapter Thirty-Three
Thirty-Three
There is something definitely wrong with me, I thought as I sat watching the sun rise over the New York City skyline. Crystal’s money still clutched in my hand, I chastised myself about being a bad friend.
I stood up, looked quickly around me, and then gingerly dug my hand down behind the waistband of my slacks and into my panties, where I had the roll of money Abimbola had given me earlier in the evening, tucked safely and securely down between my legs.
“Three thousand dollars,” he’d said when he handed it to me. “One run, that’s all I need. One run from here to California.”
“You want me to be a mule?” I said, astonished by the proposal, but more astonished by the amount of money he was going to pay me to do it.
“Yes, if that’s the term you’d like to use,” he’d said coolly.
“You’ll receive three thousand dollars more when you deliver the goods in California,” Cassius interjected between sips of her champagne.
We were at a small Greenwich Village Italian restaurant. A cozy little place that had expensive food and a sultry ambiance.
I’d learned that Cassius was his second wife and business partner. His first wife was in Lagos with their three children, and he was currently on the lookout for a third.
“Oh, that’s nice” was all I thought to say on that subject.
“I—I don’t know if I can do that,” I said, still clutching the money in my hands. “The airport has those drug-sniffing dogs.”
Abimbola bent his neck left and right, cracking it loudly. Cassius’s right hand went up immediately and began to massage his neck.
“Only for the international flights,” he said.
I rolled the money between the palms of my hands. Six thousand dollars could buy a new fall wardrobe. “How would I carry it?”
Cassius and Abimbola looked at each other and then back to me. “Inside of you, of course.” Cassius spoke to me in a tone usually reserved for a potty-training two-year-old.
“Inside of me?”
“Yes. We’ll fill condoms with the stuff, and you’ll swallow them.”
My eyes bulged.
“Of course, you’ll have an enema before you do so,” Cassius added.
“Y’all are crazy,” I whispered, still holding on to the money.
“And if this trip goes well, you can make more for us, if you’d like,” Abimbola said, before he picked up his fork and jabbed at his penne pasta.
“I didn’t say I was going to make this trip!” I snapped at him and leaned back into my chair.
What a waste of words and breath. Abimbola had me pegged from the time he saw me. Poor little black girl trying to play rich. Hanging out at the bar at the Cipriani, scoping out fresh meat and old money. He knew I wouldn’t say no, even when I was sure I would.
“Let me think about it,” I said and waved my hand at the waiter to bring me another glass of wine.
And he’d let me walk out of that restaurant with the money. “Good faith money,” he’d said as he and Cassius climbed into their chauffeured limousine.
Yes, he’d offered me a ride, but I told him I needed time alone, time to think. The exact same thing I later told Crystal.
But when I left him, I strolled the streets of Greenwich Village, gazing at the beautifully dressed windows of my favorite expensive boutiques, mentally picking out what it was I would come back the next day to purchase.
It wasn’t really late, but it was dark, and this was New York City, and I did dress in a manner that made me a target for purse snatchers and muggers, so I strolled into the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade drugstore and purchased a travel-size package of Kotex.
Next, I walked into Starbucks, snatched a plastic knife from the commissary table, and waited at least ten minutes on line for the ladies’ restroom.
Once inside, I removed one of the sanitary napkins from the package, used the plastic knife to slit it lengthwise, and then slid the three grand between the two halves before tucking it safe and sound down between my legs.
Hey, I grew up in the hood—I knew what I had to do to keep my money safe.
Back out on the sidewalk, I was confident that, short of a rapist approaching me, my money was safe.
That’s when I realized that all I had left in my wallet was seventy-five cents. Not even enough to buy a Metro card. There was no way I was going down between my legs to get some money, and besides, transit wouldn’t take a bill larger than a twenty.
So I was left with no other choice but to jump the turnstile.
I looked around the lonely station and saw that there was an old blind white man with dark shades sitting on the bench to my left, his Seeing Eye dog curled up and sleeping at his feet.
To my right was a young, thug-looking black boy who was carefully scanning his surroundings the same way I was as he prepared himself to take a piss against the wall.
That was it, except for the rats that scurried up and down the tracks and the token booth clerk, and she was too engrossed in her telephone conversation to pay me any mind.
So I jumped!
My feet had barely hit the platform when a heavy hand came down on my shoulder.
“Shit!”
It was the young thug.
“What are you doing!” I screamed, thinking I was being mugged.
“ Hellllllp! ” I shrieked as I balled up my fist and swung at his jaw.
Suddenly there was another hand on me and I turned to see that it was the old blind man, and up close I realized that he was wasn’t old or blind. And his Seeing Eye dog wasn’t a Seeing Eye dog at all but a vicious German shepherd whose jaws were tearing at the cuff of my slacks.
“Police!” the young thug screamed as he ducked my fist.
“What?”
Both men dug into the tops of their shirts and pulled out badges connected to silver link chains that hung around their necks.
They ran my information and it came up that I had warrants.
No surprise to me. I knew they were there.
Two, in fact. One for running a red light back in 1992 when I rented a silver Mustang for my birthday weekend.
That was back when I was living large and really foul.
I’d gotten a boyfriend of mine to rent the car for me; of course, he didn’t know that my license had expired.
When I ran the light at Broadway and 86th Street, the police officers confiscated the car, wrote me a ticket, and told me that I needed to appear in traffic court the next day.
Of course, I didn’t go, and I never saw that boyfriend again.
The second warrant was for shoplifting. That was a big misunderstanding; I just forgot I had that four-hundred-dollar dress in my hand when I started out the door.
It was an honest mistake—really, it was.
I was looking for the perfect dress to go to some high-caliber Upper East Side party with this German plastic surgeon I’d met and I’d been in the store so long that I’d gotten really warm, and so I removed my jacket and slung it over my arm so I could be more comfortable.
I had three or four dresses in my arms by then, and when none of them actually tickled my fancy I returned them all back to the rack, except one, the one that was the same color as my jacket.
Believe me, I didn’t realize I still had the dress when I stepped out that door.
They booked me, and my mother came and bailed me out. Once again I was given a court date but never showed up for it.
How Thomas Cook had missed those two blemishes on my record must have had something to do with all the praying I did when I handed in the job application!