Chapter 8 #4
This man was sitting here with his wife zip tied to a headboard across town trying to hold himself together and talk business like his whole world wasn’t quietly on fire and he didn’t even know that the person responsible for it was sitting in the same room watching him do it.
I stood up and Street dapped him once out of respect for the history even if the relationship was done and we walked back out to the car.
I kept my face straight all the way to the street.
Kept it straight getting in the car.
Kept it straight for the first two blocks.
Then I let out a slow breath and leaned my head back against the headrest.
Street glanced over at me. “You good?”
“I’m good,” I said. “Just glad that’s over.”
He nodded and drove and I rode with everything running in the back of my head.
The burner call was already made. My runners were already moving and enroute to get that bag from this nigga.
The pickup was already in motion on the other side of the city while we were sitting in that warehouse shaking hands.
By tonight this was going to be finished.
All of it other than the niggas we had to check. Damn, taking bread from this nigga felt good.
—
I dropped Street off and told him I had moves to make and would link with him later. He didn’t push it because he knew what I meant when I said I had moves.
I went home first and checked on Sandra and told her a few more hours and she was going home.
She nodded and looked at me in that way she had developed over the last twenty four hours that I wasn’t going to think too hard about.
She told me that before she left, she wanted to feel me one more time.
And guess what, my dumb ass stopped what I was doing and gave her the dick that she begged for.
I couldn’t lie. That shit was even better and wetter than last night.
Trying not to get in my head over that fire ass twat, I made the call from the burner.
I had coached her through it before I left for the warehouse that morning.
We made the call early. She knew what to say, when to cry, when to beg.
She had looked at me while I explained it with this expression on her face that was somewhere between cooperating and something else I couldn’t name and then she had nodded and said she understood.
I put the phone on speaker and held it up.
Tavarus picked up before the second ring.
“I need the hundred thousand tonight,” I said through the distorter I had on the burner that dropped my voice into something unrecognizable. “You got the instructions. Follow them exactly and she comes home tonight breathing.”
“I have the money,” Tavarus said and his voice was different from the warehouse. Stripped of the businessman composure. Raw in a way that told me whatever else he was, he loved his wife. “I just need to know she’s okay.”
I held the phone toward Sandra.
She didn’t hesitate. She cried on cue, told him she was scared, told him to please just get her home, hit every note I had told her to hit and then I pulled the phone back.
“Tonight,” I said. “Don’t try anything.”
I hung up and looked at Sandra.
She looked back at me.
“You did good,” I said.
“I want to go home now. He sounds devastated.” she said. Quiet. And for the first time it didn’t sound like she was performing it.
“Tonight,” I told her. “I promise.”
—
My runners were three niggas I had been using for two years.
Young, hungry, smart enough to follow instructions and not ask extra questions.
I had positioned them at the pickup location two hours before the drop time and positioned myself a block and a half away in the Tahoe where I could see everything without being seen.
The exchange went smooth. Tavarus’s man showed up with the duffel, handed it off at the location I had specified, and was gone in under four minutes. My runners brought it to the secondary location. They made sure they weren’t being followed, then they came three blocks over where I was waiting.
I unzipped the bag and went through it fast.
I found the tracker in the lining of the bag on the second pass.
Those niggas must thought they were dealing with a rookie?
I knew everything to look for. The magnet was small, flat, magnetic.
Professional. I had been expecting it because I would’ve done the same thing in his position.
I transferred every bill into the clean bag I had brought, took my time making sure there wasn’t a second device anywhere in the cash itself, and when I was satisfied I tossed the duffel in a dumpster on the next block and paid my runners their cut in cash on the spot.
They left.
I sat in the Tahoe alone and unzipped the clean bag and looked at a hundred thousand dollars sitting in front of me and let that sit for a second.
Thirty of it was Street’s debt that Tavarus had just unknowingly paid back to himself.
The rest was mine for the trouble.
I was going to give Street his thirty back without telling him where it came from. Tell him it was money I had been holding from a separate situation. He was going to argue and I was going to tell him to shut up and take it and eventually he was going to take it because that’s how we worked.
I zipped the bag and drove home.
—
Sandra was ready when I came in. I could tell by the way she was sitting. She say straight, composed, shoes on even though I had left them untied at the foot of the bed. She had been waiting and feeling bad for her hoe ass husband.
I undid the zip ties and she stood up and rolled her wrist then looked at me.
We didn’t say much walking out. I took her down the back stairs and out the rear exit and we walked two blocks in the direction of the Main Street.
I called the car service from a prepaid number told them we’d pay in cash and also have a hefty tip.
I gave them a pickup location half a block from where we were standing.
Then I gave her the money to give the driver.
When the car pulled up she turned around and looked at me.
Then she hugged me.
Not a fake ass hug either. A real hug. Arms around me, her face against my shoulder, holding on for a second longer than a woman who had been held against her will for four days had any logical reason to hold on.
She pulled back and kissed my cheek and looked at me straight.
“I’ll never forget you, sweet hood nigga who kidnapped me.” she said. And then she smiled and it changed her whole face.
“Young niggas really are everything they’re hyped up to be.”
I laughed. Actually laughed. “Go home Sandra.”
“You know my name. What’s yours?” She asked.
“You know I can’t tell you that. Let’s just say, I’m your dream nigga. Now go!”
She walked down the street, got in the car and I stood there until it pulled off, turned the corner and was gone.
I stood on that sidewalk alone for a second and then I squeezed my hand around the bag strap on my shoulder and started walking back toward my building.
A hundred thousand dollars.
Street’s debt handled.
Tavarus’s wife headed home safe and unharmed.
And a message delivered in the only language that men like Tavarus actually heard.
I walked back into my building smiling and took the stairs up, unlocked my apartment and dropped the bag on the couch and sat down and looked at the ceiling.
Niggas really thought they had it figured out. Thought that by building walls around their home life meant that life couldn’t reach them from outside. Thought that because they had somebody to go home to they were operating from a position of strength that nobody could touch.
Tavarus had found out tonight that wasn’t true.
You played with my family, then I would play with everything you had.
That was the only rule I had ever operated by and it had never once failed me.
I pulled out my phone and called Street.
“Come through tomorrow. I got something for you.”
I was about to give my boy everything he earned from that fight. Tomorrow, I was gonna go buy Simone ass something nice. Little did she know, her ass was about to be mine. No questions asked.