Chapter 2
I was pacing back and forth in my room, trying to catch my breath and clear my head.
Most of the time, I hated having the bedroom that faced the front street.
Between sirens flying down the block at all hours of the night, people yelling outside, car horns, loud music rattling windows, and police lights flashing through my curtains every other hour, it always felt impossible to really relax in there.
Even when I was tired, Brooklyn had a way of keeping my ass awake.
Tonight, though, I appreciated the window more than ever because my paranoia was through the roof after seeing those bodies and taking that cash. Every few seconds, I found myself peeking through the blinds, checking the block like somebody was about to come looking for me next.
Death was real to me now, and before tonight, street shit just looked like money, chains, fresh clothes, and fast cash. Nobody talked about how quick everything could end. Them niggas were probably sitting around counting money one minute, then dead on the floor the next.
“Khalil?”
My mama knocked twice before pushing the door open anyway.
“Khalil?” she repeated, sounding like she’d already called my name a few times.
She probably had, but I was so deep in my head that hearing anything besides hearing Harold find his brother dead felt damn near impossible.
“Yeah, ma.”
She stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame, looking exhausted from work.
“Rami and I are about to walk down to Grimaldi’s to get a pizza. We're getting that and a bag of chips. You okay with pepperoni, right?”
“Yeah, ma. Pepperoni sounds good, but uh, one second.”
I walked into the closet where I had the stack of money from the crime scene hidden underneath an old shoebox full of papers and random junk. It was ten thousand dollars.
I’d counted it before stashing it away and still couldn’t believe that much money was sitting in my closet.
Some of the bills were stained with blood around the edges, but most of the money in the middle looked clean.
If somebody didn’t know what happened, they probably wouldn’t think twice about it.
I thumbed through the stack and pulled out a hundred-dollar bill.
“Boy, hurry up out of there and tell me what you want,” she called out. “My feet hurting, but your brother insists on pizza tonight.”
I quickly shoved the rest of the money back into the closet before she decided to come any farther into my room.
When I walked back over, I handed her the hundred-dollar bill.
“Where did you get this from, Khalil?”
“I've been taking trash out in the apartment building down the street for this old lady for about a month now, after school. This was my first payment from her, but at least it was a good one.” I shrugged my shoulders like it wasn’t shit.
My mama kept staring at the money for another second like she wanted to question me harder, but I never really gave her a reason to think I was lying.
Truth was, my mama trusted me more than she probably should’ve. She had been leaving me and Rami home alone at night ever since I was around ten years old. Technically, she probably could’ve gotten locked up for that, but desperation makes people do what they gotta do.
After my stepfather, George, died coming home from work years ago, everything changed for us almost overnight.
I was now the man of the house, and there was no adult here with us while my mama was gone to work.
She was working sunup to sundown over at the Quatar household, just trying to keep bills paid and food inside the refrigerator.
She ain’t really have a choice but to leave us home alone while she works.
Back then, nights usually ended the same way.
Dinner would already be cooked with instructions for me to warm it up later.
She’d point her finger at both of us, reminding us not to open the door for anybody, no matter who knocked.
Then she’d kiss me and Rami on the forehead before rushing out to go spend her days taking care of kids that weren’t even hers.
“Khalil, I can’t take your hard earned money to buy pizza. You should put this in savings to pay for that trip to the White House this summer, since you know I won’t have the extra money either.”
“You unfortunately never do, Mom,” I muttered under my breath.
“Khalil. What does that mean? You know Ms. Amelia is struggling after Mecca’s death.”
“And how many years have we struggled while you took care of them?” My voice only raised slightly before I told myself that I was tripping, and I brought my tone down a notch.
“Look, ma, I will worry about the D.C. trip later, but right now, I just want you and Rami not to have to split a pizza and fill up on Pringles. Get a large pepperoni-and-sausage pizza with extra cheese. And an order of those cannolis, too.”
She exhaled, looked at the money again, and then I saw her giving in on her face.
“Alright, if you insist. We will be back shortly.”
“Okay, ma.” She got ready to walk out the door, before I stopped her.
“Hey ma, would you mind if I run down the street to talk to Harold real fast?”
She smiled at me immediately, and I already knew where she was about to go with it.
“Talk to Harold, or his sister, who you call yourself liking?” She laughed, one of those deep laughs that always managed to make me smile a little, no matter what mood I was in.
“Oh, Niara? I ain’t worried about that girl. I need to talk to Harold about some sh—stuff.” I caught myself before the curse word fully slipped out.
My mother smirked at me like she knew I was full of shit anyway before stepping out of the room, and a few seconds later, I heard her and Rami heading out the front door.
I waited until I heard them make it down the stoop and farther along the sidewalk before I moved. Grabbing my hoodie off the chair near my bed, I threw it on, took the money out of the closet, and pulled the hoodie over my head before leaving out behind them.
I kept my hands buried inside my hoodie pocket while walking fast, trying my hardest not to keep looking over my shoulder every five seconds. Every person standing outside suddenly looked suspicious to me now. Every slow-moving car felt like it was watching.
I mainly wanted to check on Harold and make sure he was straight because I already knew he was taking it worse than me. That was his brother laying there.
Before we split up earlier, he mentioned calling in an anonymous tip once he got home so the police could find the bodies without knowing he had been over there.
Honestly, he was in a fucked up position.
He was so scared of probation that even reporting a crime scene felt dangerous.
That’s part of why so much shit goes unreported in New York anyway.
Half the people in the neighborhoods don’t trust the police, and the other half are too scared of getting wrapped up in something themselves.
When I got to the end of the block and was about to turn down by Harold’s building, I froze in my tracks. Flashing lights bounced against the wet pavement in the distance while somebody screamed so hard it sounded like their chest was caving in.
I stayed where I was at, my heart immediately speeding up because I ain’t know what the fuck had happened now. Police cars clogged the block ahead, red and blue lights flickering against windows and parked cars, while people started gathering outside trying to see what was going on.
For a second, I thought about turning around and going back home. After what I’d already seen tonight, I wasn’t trying to walk into any more bullshit.
I stood near the corner watching from a distance until Crackhead Sammy came stumbling down the sidewalk with both hands pressed on top of his head like he was stressed. His eyes looked wide and restless while he kept glancing back toward the crowd behind him.
“Yo, Sammy,” I called out cautiously. “What the hell happened down there?”
“Man, they shot lil Harold.”
“What?”
My eyes instantly shot back down the block toward the flashing lights because the shit ain’t even sound real coming out his mouth.
“Is he dead?”
“As a muhfuckin doorknob, you hear me? They're saying Chase got killed at some apartment too. God damn, man.” Sammy shook his head hard while rubbing both hands over his face. “Let me take my ass home before somebody comes after me.”
He hurried off down the sidewalk, looking genuinely terrified, moving fast like death itself was somewhere behind him.
I stood planted in one spot after that.
My heart felt like it dropped straight into my stomach when I heard they got Harold, too. Less than two hours ago, I was standing right next to him while he held his brother on that apartment floor, screaming and crying. Now somebody has killed him, too?
None of this shit was making sense.
I turned around and headed back toward my house as fast as my legs would carry me. My mind was racing too hard to stay outside around all those people.
I had way more questions than answers now.
I took long strides back up the block, feeling as if all I needed now was to get to my stoop. However, at the exact moment that I finally stepped up to run inside, I felt a force grab me from behind, and a wool bag was put over my head.
I felt my body being shoved into a car filled with cigar smoke. Tires screeched against the concrete, and that’s when I started to scream. I wished I’d never come outside to begin with.
The ride felt never ending. Every bump in the road jerked my body around while that rough wool bag stayed tight over my head, making it hard to breathe.
At this point, all I could think about was my mama probably sitting in the apartment, wondering where I was, while I was somewhere about to get killed over some shit I barely even understood.
When the car finally came to a stop, somebody roughly yanked me forward before snatching the bag off my head.
“Where the fuck is the two hundred thousand dollars that got stolen from the stash spot earlier?” he snapped.
“What?” My voice came out shaky.
“I ain’t take no two hundred thousand dollars. What the fuck is you talking about?”
The nigga leaned closer to me.
“Nigga, you know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about. Everybody at the stash house got wacked, and Crackhead Sammy saw Harold and his little partner running out of that apartment. You and him went in there and killed all of them and took all the money stashed there!”
My stomach dropped when I heard there was a witness to us leaving that spot.
“Look, we didn’t take any of that money.”
I said, my voice cracking from panic. Everything he was accusing me of, he was saying like it was facts, and I knew it wasn’t. At least not all of it.
“Look, we did go over there, and when we saw Chase shot on the ground, we panicked and ran out, but we didn’t do it.”
The car got silent for a second after I said it.
Then his eyes narrowed.
“Where the fuck is the rest of the fuckin money, nigga?” he yelled. “
“I-I don’t know that part,” I stuttered.
“Look, I swear to God, I don’t have your money.”
Before I could say anything else, two of them grabbed me and started digging aggressively through my pockets. Panic exploded through my chest because I remembered I still had all of the money on me that I took from the ground in the stash house.
“Hold up.”
One of them pulled the stack from my hoodie pocket.
My heart damn near stopped beating.
The nigga flipped through the money before spreading the edges of the bills apart. The blood stains showed immediately, and right then, I knew I was going to die.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, where the fuck is the rest of the money?” the man barked, raising the gun again.
My mama always told me there would come times in life when I questioned God. Times when fear would make me wonder why things were happening to me. But she also told me never to stop praying. Never stop asking God for mercy, no matter what the situation looks like.
“That’s just money I found on the ground there, man, I promise. I swear to you, I don’t know where the rest of the money is.”
“Pop this nigga mayne!”
“But I can get you some money! I swear I can. It’s not that money, but I can try and get the 200,000 back for you!”
“From where?”
“From my family.”
“What family you know coming up off of that kind of money?”
“I’m a Quatar!”
They looked at each other, tripped out by what I said. It wasn’t known to many, and my mama didn’t even know that I knew. But back when I was younger, Mecca Quatar stopped by the house on a rare visit, and I heard their argument about my mama and his relationship over the years.
From that, I knew my mama had dealings with him beyond cleaning his house, and I knew that Amir isn’t the last of Mecca’s sons around.
“Please don’t kill me. Let me try to reach out to my brother Amir for the money, please!”