by Roy Glenn
“Thanks, Ben.”
I backed up and parked as instructed, in the handicap space. “I take it you come here often?”
“Once or twice, maybe.”
“You never did say why we were coming here?”
“Maybe I just needed a drink.”
“Is everything a secret with you?”
“There’s somebody here I need to talk to. Besides, I need a drink. Come on.”
We went inside the club and Zavier got the same reception. One of the waitresses hugged Zavier and rolled her eyes at me.
No respect; the bitch.
Then, “Zavier!” another man yelled over the music.
“Chill!” Zavier yelled just as loud. The two men embraced as men do nowadays. “Chill, this is my very good friend, Carla Edwards. Carla, this is Gary Childs.”
“How you doing,” he said very formally. “Come here, Zavier. Let me holla at yah a minute.”
“Excuse me, Carla. I’ll be right back.” Zavier threw his arm around him and they walked away.
I was walking around the club checking things out, when a man said, “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“I just got here.”
“This your first time here?”
“Yes, it is. I’m here with a friend.”
“Well, if you need anything or you have a problem, just let me know. Enjoy your evening.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.” I turned to say thank you, but when I did he was gone.
Not too long after that, Zavier walked up behind me.
“Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay. I don’t think your friend likes me.”
“Who… Chill?” Zavier frowned. “Don’t let that bother you. Chill loves women, he just doesn’t trust them. Some of y’all got too much game for his taste. He believes that that is one of life’s traps. He’s good people though. One of the best I know. He’s my—”
“Zavier!” another man yelled over the music. It was starting to get old.
“Keys!” The man walked up to us. It was the same man that I was just talking to. “How you doing? Got a good crowd tonight.”
“Yeah, they’re coming on in.” Keys, I guess that’s his name, said and looked over at the bar. “Now they need to start drinking.”
“We need to talk.” Zavier said to him. He led us to a table in the back of the club and we sat down.
The waitress with the rolling eyes came up to the table and placed a drink in front of Zavier. “Can I get you something?” she didn’t say it, but I heard bitch loud and clear.
“Vodka Collins.” I didn’t say it, but bitch came through loud and clear. As she went to get my drink, both men looked at one another and smiled.
“Dwight, this is Carla Edwards. Carla, this is my brother Dwight Keys.”
He extended his hand. “Call me Keys. You know, like door keys,” he laughed. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Carla. Like I said, if you need anything, or if you have a problem, just let me know. Food, drink, anything in the house is yours, and your money is no good here.” Then he kissed my hand.
“Well, thank you. Like I said,” returning his kiss with a smile as the waitress returned with my drink. “I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Enough of this already,” Zavier said. “I need to talk to you.”
“Don’t hate,” Keys replied.
“I got shot today.” Zavier had his attention now.
“The Lithuanians you were meeting?” That raised an eyebrow. The accent.
“Yeah. I made the exchange with fat boy then the quiet man shot me. They took the package and the money, and left me for dead.”
“I told you to let me come back you up. I’ll get my gun.”
“No, you got a club to run.”
“Chill can run things.”
“No, Dwight. I got this.”
“You got this? That’s how you got yourself shot. I’m coming with you.”
“No. I just need you to put the word out that I’m looking for them.”
“What they look like.”
“Two white men. Fat boy had a blue suit, white shirt, and a tie that looked like it was a holdover from the seventies. The quiet man was dressed the same, only his suit was black.”
“Zavier,“ I said, and both men looked at me like they were shocked that I could talk. “That sounds like the men that came to my house looking for you.” Zavier looked at me strangely. “The police.”
“Those weren’t cops,” Zavier said.
“Hold up,” Keys said. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would they go to her house if they already had the package and the money?”
“I don’t know.”
“You tell Cindy yet?”
“No. I was going to talk to her next. There’s something that she’s not telling me.”
“I never did quite trust her.”
“Neither do I, but she pays good, up front and in cash. I might need you and Chill to back me up later.”
“Now you’re talking like you got some sense.”
Zavier got up and drained his glass. I finished mine as quickly as I could, and followed Zavier out the door. Once we got to my car Zavier turned to me.
“Maybe you should stay here, Carla.”
“No,” was all I said, and got in the car.
“Up ’til now I thought you had good sense.”
I had to smile. “Up ’til now, I thought so too.”
Zavier had me drive him downtown to one of the many new condos they had built not far from Centennial Olympic Park. “So that’s your brother?”
“Him and Chill both.”
“Was papa a rolling stone?”
“Huh?” I could tell he was distracted.
“None of you have the same last name.”
“Life made us brothers, not birth right. There’s a bond between the three of us that will never be broken. Blood is thicker than water, but life’s bonds are stronger than both of them.”
“So, who is this Cindy?”
“She’s my contact.”
He didn’t offer any other explanation. I had never seen him look so serious. Gone was that easy smile that I’ve come to know. I parked the car and Zavier got out. He walked fast and I followed behind him. When we got to what I guess was her apartment, Zavier knocked on the door, but there was no answer. He tried the doorknob, it wasn’t locked.
“Wait here.”
Zavier took the gun out of his pocket. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. He pushed the door open with the barrel of his gun and went inside slowly.
After a while, my curiosity got the better of me and I went in. The place looked like it had been hit by a tornado. As I walked further into the apartment I saw Zavier crouched behind the couch.
“Is she here?” I asked as I walked closer to him.
“Not anymore.”
“Oh my God!”
“Shhh, be quiet.”
Zavier was kneeling beside her body. He reached down and closed her eyes. There was blood everywhere. Her neck was slit from ear to ear. I felt my stomach and my knees getting weak. I reached out to steady myself.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said quietly and grabbed my hand. “Let’s get out of here. She’s not gonna be any help to us now. Rest in peace, Cindy.”
We walked quickly out of the apartment. Zavier wiped the doorknob and closed the door. Once we were in the car and away, Zavier said, “This doesn’t make any sense. If they got the money and the flash drive, why would they be looking for me and why would they kill her and search her apartment?”
“I have no clue,” I replied. Because I didn’t. Seeing Cindy’s body let me know that I was in way over my head.
Zavier was silent for a while and then he said, “Her body was still warm, they couldn’t have been gone long. Take me to the Ritz. Fast.”
I drove as fast as I could to the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead. We went to the same room that he had taken me to that very first night.
“Wait her
e. I mean it this time, Carla.”
Once again, Zavier removed his gun and went in. I peeked in behind him. The room appeared to be empty, but it was obvious that the Lithuanians had been there and searched the room.
“Damn!” I heard Zavier say. “You can come in now, Carla.” I came inside to find Zavier holding up a suit with the sleeves torn out of it. “I really liked this suit.”
“What are you going to do now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. They’re looking for something or they’d be gone by now,” he said and threw the suit down. “Shit!” then he turned to me. “Come on. I’m taking you home. I want you to get some things together and go stay with a friend or something. I’ll figure out what to do once you’re safe.”
This time he got no argument from me. I was starting to get a little scared. It’s funny how fear brings back your common sense with a quickness.
As we walked through the hotel lobby I glanced at the bar and there they were. They were sitting, having a drink and talking.
“Zavier, that’s them.”
“Who?”
“The men that came to my house.”
“What?”
“The Lithuanians!” I said, louder than I needed to.
“Where?”
“Over there in the bar,’ I said and pointed them out to him.
Zavier said nothing. His eyes narrowed and he went in the bar. I followed him in. Why, I don’t know. He walked right up to the table and without a word, took out his gun and shot both of them twice in the head.
There were people running and screaming everywhere.
“Call security!” I heard somebody say.
“Call the police.” I heard a woman yell as she ran past me.
I got to Zavier as he was going through the pockets of the two dead Lithuanians. He pulled what looked like a flash drive out of the fat one’s pocket. There was a metal briefcase under the table, Zavier picked it up and turned around.
“Take this,” he said handing me the case.
“What’s in it?”
“Half a million dollars.”
“Whaat?”
“Take it and get out of here … now.”
“What about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. You just get out of here. I’ll get with you later. Now go.”
“But—”
“GO!”
I walked out of the bar as fast as I could, and once I was out, I began to run with the rest of the crowd. I got to my car and I began to cry. My heart was once again pounding in my chest and my hands were shaking, but I made it home in one piece. I ran inside and locked the door behind me. I went in the dining room and got a chair. Clutching the briefcase under my arm, I dragged a chair into the bedroom.
The Lithuanians were dead, and even though I was pretty sure that nobody would be coming after me, I locked the bedroom door and hooked the chair under the knob. I sat there in darkness for hours with the case in front of me. Still crying, still shaking like a leaf until I cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up the next morning I turned on the television and turned to the morning news. I expected there to be news about a shooting at the Ritz, but there was nothing. I logged on to ajc.com, the Internet site for our local paper.
Nothing.
I looked at the case still on my bed. I sat down and looked at it for who knows how long. Later that night I finally got up the courage to open it. I flipped the latches slowly and carefully, halfway expecting it to explode or gas to escape from it. But nothing happened. I opened it slowly.
“Oh my God.”
I had never seen half a million dollars in cash before, so I counted it. There were fifty bundles of ten thousand dollars each. I thought about what Zavier said about risk and opportunity.
“Life is about risk, Carla. Some people choose to look at the risk in every opportunity. I choose to look at the opportunity in every risk.”
I didn’t know if Zavier was alive or dead, in jail or on the run for murder. I looked at the briefcase again, stared at it, opened it up and looked at the money. This is what he meant by opportunity in every risk. I had taken a risk big-time by going with him. Now I was sitting alone on my bed with half a million dollars in front of me.
Now I had to ask myself the question, one more time.
Was Xavier Assante the wrong man?
I had half a million reasons to believe that he wasn’t.
