Chapter 8 #2
Nobody spoke, instead we let him think. I could tell he was fighting to remember every little detail, but brain trauma didn't work like that. The harder you forced it, the further that shit seemed to run and that accident did a number on him.
"You recognize the car?" Mike finally asked from the corner.
Marv slowly shook his head. "Nah."
"The plates?"
"Nah."
"The shooters?"
He closed his eyes again. "I swear I keep seeing one face." He rubbed his forehead. "But every time I think I got it, it disappear."
I leaned back in my chair, studying him for another second. "So this wasn't no robbery."
"Nah." He answered without hesitation. "They came to kill me."
"Over what?"
"I don't know."
"You got beef you ain't tell nobody about?"
He looked offended. "When the hell I ever kept street shit from y'all?"
He had a point because Marv talked too damn much to keep something like that to himself.
Kev scratched the side of his beard before speaking up. "Could be some old shit."
"Could be," Marv admitted. "But if it is, I can't think of who."
The room got quiet again, but this time it wasn't because nobody had anything to say. We were all thinking the same thing. Somebody wanted Marv dead, but the question was who? Or maybe this was something deeper.
Marv suddenly looked over at me like he had just remembered something. "Aye Lev…"
"What?"
"The fifty."
I frowned. "Man, right now ain’t the time to talk in codes. What fifty?"
"The fifty you fronted me."
My expression changed. "What about it?"
He let out a deep breath before looking down at the blanket covering his legs. "That shit gone."
Nobody in the room moved after he said that. Kev stopped tapping his foot and Mike unfolded his arms from across his chest.
I just looked at him. "What you mean it's gone?"
Marv never answered me right away. Instead, he ran his hand over his face before letting it fall back onto the bed. His jaws were grinding back and forth like he was chewing on something as the monitor beside him continued its steady beeping while he stared down at the blanket covering his legs.
"I mean what I’m saying." He finally looked back up at me, “that shit gone."
I frowned, leaning back in the chair while studying his face, he wasn't bullshitting. I knew my cousin too well for that. Whatever was bothering him had been eating at him since he woke up.
"Gone how?" I asked calmly. "Did they take it?"
He immediately shook his head. "Nah."
"So where the fuck it go then?"
"I don't know."
That was the wrong answer for me and he should’ve known that. I rubbed my beard before leaning forward once again, resting my forearms on my knees. "Slow down," I told him. "Start from where you know, not from where you guessing."
Marv let out a frustrated sigh and closed his eyes for a second.
"When I left the warehouse, the money was on me inside the hoodie.
You know, how we stitch out the hidden spot.
When they started shooting," He paused again, rubbing the side of his head.
"That's where everything got fucked up. I’ve been trying to remember. "
"Take your time then," I told him. It was a difference between if somebody was trying to kill him, rob him, or bring me out of retirement, which I had no intentions on doing, but stealing from my blood was like stealing from me.
"I remember feeling the money still there."
"You sure?"
"I'm almost positive." He looked irritated with himself. "I remember feeling along the lining because I wasn't about to lose fifty bands, ain’t no way.”
Kev nodded from the chair beside him. "Yep, that sound like you."
"It is me." Marv looked over at him before turning back to me. "After that... I got hit. I remember my shoulder burning like a muhfucka and then my torso. I remember losing control of the wheel and crashing. After that…" He shook his head slowly. "I don't know what the hell happened."
Mike finally pushed himself off the wall and walked closer to the bed. "So when you woke up in the hospital…"
Marv cut him off before he could finish.
"That shit was still there but now, the money ain’t nowhere to be found.
I asked every fucking body.” Marv sarcastically laughed and it was one of those laughs that meant he was ready to kill somebody.
"They told me everything they received from EMS was logged into my belongings.
My chain was there, my watch was there, my wallet was there, even my Glock was there.
" He stopped for a second, letting that sink in.
“The hoodie was there but where the money was stashed in the hoodie, that shit was gone. "
I remained calm while pushing that killer instinct back deep down inside of me.
Hell, fifty thousand dollars wasn't gone change my life one way or the other, however it was the principle. Somebody had touched something that belonged to my family and Marv better ad figured out who. I guarantee they wouldn’t touch shit else that didn’t belong to them when got done.
On top of that, we had even a bigger problem, somebody tried to take his life, and that needed to be figured out too.
In the midst of the convo, I received three emails back-to-back from my assistant with ten different people inquiring about my services, but we all knew more money meant more problems that wasn’t shit to a boss.