Around the Way Girls

by Karen Williams Chunichi

  Larry was the last person LaShawn wanted to see. Sick thoughts of the way he’d treated her came rushing to her mind. She pictured herself killing him in various ways. She saw herself reaching for B’s gun and blowing his brains out. She then thought of squeezing his neck so hard that he would choke to death. She pictured his face with his eyes bulging out his sockets.

  Another sick vision came into her mind. She wanted to cut into him with a knife or any sharp object that would give her the satisfaction of seeing blood gush from his body.

  B didn’t know who Larry was or what had come over LaShawn, but they were both standing in the way of his crazy payday. He pulled his gun out of his waist and grabbed Larry by his throat, pinning him up in the hallway.

  “Look, nigga,” B told him, “don’t let ya ego get ya ass shot. I’ll kill you nigga. Send ya ass straight to the Lord. You feelin’ me?”

  “Y-y-you got it, man,” Larry stuttered, piss trickling down his pants leg.

  B let Larry go, and he slid down to the hallway floor and slumped over in his piss puddle.

  LaShawn watched as B exposed Larry for the bitch he truly was. All of the times he had laid his fists into her, this nigga couldn’t stand up to the next nigga. Nigga was straight pissing on himself when faced with the real heat of the street. She knew she would never have to worry about him coming to her apartment ever again.

  She kicked him in his dick with force as they stepped around him to get on the elevator.

  “Aaahh!”

  “Shut up, you bitch-ass muthafucka! Fuck you!” LaShawn had gotten some of his piss on her natural colored Timbs. She gathered a wad of spit in her mouth and shot it in Larry’s face before walking away.

  DiViNCi’s video was being shot in the evening in several locations in Manhattan. For this particular shot, they were in a large warehouse in the downtown section of TriBeCa, where stars such as Jay-Z, Beyoncé, and Robert De Niro resided. Misha was floating on air knowing she was filming close to where Jay-Z lived. She was hoping to somehow run into him while they were in the area. Misha was a huge fan of his and would have loved to have been in one of his videos.

  Misha’s outfit for this scene was a pair of faded blue skinny jeans, a leather cocoa-colored motorcycle jacket with nothing but bare skin underneath, and a pair of Gucci cocoa-brown leather boots.

  She had makeup artists applying the best makeup to her already beautiful face, and wardrobe stylists pulling her clothes for future scenes and holding them up to her body to see how they would look. They were fussing all over her as they worked to get the look the director desired.

  The way she was being treated, you would have thought she was the music artist. They had her feeling like a star on a movie set, and she couldn’t get enough of it. People were running here and there to make sure she had whatever she needed. They had her favorite foods, drinks, books, magazines. Whatever she wanted, she had it at her disposal. Misha, a no-name video vixen, knew Swag had to pull some serious strings for her to receive the royal treatment she was getting for her first time in front of the camera.

  Whakelah stood to the side and watched as her girl was pampered like a queen. Now this would have made a great episode on my show, Whakelah thought. She wanted to bring Kadayja and Marvin with her, but no kids were allowed on the set, by DiViNCi request. They would have jumped out of their skin to be there with her. Whakelah thought it was probably best that the kids not be on the set anyway. The robbery was going down tonight, so there was no telling what to expect.

  Whakelah had owed Misha her life after Misha arranged for the lawyer to take $3,100 of his own money to put with the $2,900 she had to make her case go away. He resisted a little in the beginning, but when Misha told him about the pictures that she had been taking of their sexual business meetings he decided he would go along with the plan so that he could keep his marriage intact and make her go away. Misha didn’t have any pictures of him and her together, but he sure as hell didn’t know it.

  Whakelah started to feel guilty. Misha had done nothing but look out for her, and here she was going along with LaShawn, a chick who meant Misha no good, and who had pretty much convinced her to sleep with a stranger.

  The music was starting up. DiViNCi’s song, “Money Maker,” blared through the sound system that they had set up in the warehouse, and people were taking their places on the set. Dancers were still warming up. It wasn’t time for them to do their thing yet, but they were making sure they would all be in sync when it was time.

  The warehouse had been broken down into three small sets, a bar scene, a bedroom scene, and a scene where the two of them would be in a Jacuzzi. Multiple scenes of DiViNCi and Misha were filmed. On the surface it looked as if they were involved in a romantic love affair, but those on the set knew otherwise. Misha didn’t have eyes for anyone except for Swag.

  Whakelah wondered where Swag was. He was supposed to be on the set along with Misha; at least that’s where Misha had told her he would be. She hadn’t seen Ty either. She was looking forward to seeing him again. She wanted to talk to him about the reality show and what he really thought of it. Misha had told her about Swag and Ty being interested in her show, but after the incident at Club Mansion with that asshole, Steve Smith, and the other jerks who weren’t feeling her concept, she needed to hear the opinion straight from the horse’s mouth.

  Whakelah didn’t know why she’d waited so long to call Ty. In fact she hadn’t used it since putting it in her phone. From all of the things that Misha had told her about him, she had been blocking her own blessings by not calling him.

  She scrolled through the contacts in her phone and pushed Ty’s name. She was calling to see if he and Swag would be arriving on the video set anytime soon. She didn’t get an answer.

  Ty was smoking a blunt with Swag at the dining room table of Swag’s home. “Aye, man, shouldn’t we be leaving for the video shoot?”

  “Yeah, in a minute. This shit needs to be weighed out.” Swag had a bunch of coke on his dining room table and still had quite a few packages to make. He sifted the cocaine around in its container. He was packaging up for some people on the set, plus members of the cast that he had to get straight. That’s how he was paying for DiViNCi’s video.

  Swag and Ty never filled Misha in on how they funded their record company. It seemed as though everyone was building a recording empire off drugs, so Swag fell in love with the idea. It proved to be a wise decision. They obtained a distribution deal through one of the major labels and was granted the opportunity to be able to own the rights to their songs and keep control of their recordings.

  “Come on, man, they can’t start the video without us there, dawg,” Ty told Swag.

  Swag was dressed for his cameo appearance in the video. He had on a blue denim LRG suit with beige Timbs and a beige Gucci skullcap on his head.

  “Yo, Ty, go up and get the haze that I left on my dresser. I’ma need that shit.”

  Ty didn’t feel like going to get the haze. He had just smoked a blunt and was about to make himself a quick sandwich. Swag’s room was upstairs and on the other side of the house. It took almost five whole minutes to get there.

  “Nah, man, I ain’t tryin’ to go all the way up there. That shit is like eight miles away,” he joked.

  “Nigga, don’t you run marathons and shit? Stop bitchin’ and go get that shit.” “Nigga, you go get that shit. This is your house, it’s your shit, and it’s in your room.” Ty had the munchies, and all he was about to do was make his sandwich.

  “A’ight, nigga. Damn. At least make yourself useful and finish baggin’ this shit up.”

  Swag was on his way up the stairs when his cell phone rang. He looked and saw that it was Misha. He figured that she was at the video set and she was probably wondering where he was. He didn’t answer his phone, knowing he’d be seeing his baby in a few.

  B had the lights out on the burgundy ’07 Dodge Charger, as he and LaShawn approached Swag’s house. They saw cars outside and a fe
w lights on inside the mini mansion. LaShawn thought Swag was going to be at the video shoot, and were not expecting anyone to be in the house. She figured he had left some of his friends behind at his house. But it didn’t matter to her if Swag was there or not. Someone was there, so it wasn’t a good time.

  “Yo, B, we gon’ have to come back and do this shit some other time.”

  “Fuck some other time! I’m here now, I ain’t goin’ nowhere, but in that house right there,” B said, pointing to Swag’s crib.

  B had never seen a place like Swag’s in his career of burglaries. LaShawn had been on point like a muthafucka, in his eyes. The house was a castle compared to the apartments, one-family houses, and duplexes that he fucked with. The largest score he had ever done was a church he had hit over on 167th Street and the Grand Concourse. Swag’s house looked to be twice the size of the church.

  B’s dick was hard just sitting there waiting to get inside. He knew there was a bunch of goodies inside of Swag’s house just waiting for a nigga like him. There wasn’t going to be no coming back. He was getting up in there and he was getting his.

  “You think you can take on everybody in that house?”

  “LaShawn, I get it in for real. I’m that nigga for real.” He pulled his Glock out of his waist. “I’ll lift a nigga eight feet off the mufuckin’ ground with this shit right here.”

  “Nigga, we ain’t came to catch no bodies, we came to get paid. We gon’ chill until they break out, then we go in.”

  “See, you be dealin’ with them bum-ass niggas, like that nigga I had to lay out before we got out here. Keep dealing with them bums, you gon’ keep comin’ up with crumbs.”

  LaShawn thought about what B was kicking to her. He was right. Wasn’t she there to set it on Swag? So what if he was in the house? Didn’t she want to hurt him like he had hurt her the night he dissed her? The nigga had money and drugs, two things she needed. And everything she needed was on the other side of Swag’s front door.

  “A’ight, nigga, I’m wit’ you,” LaShawn told him.

  B handed her a ski mask. She slid the dark wool mask onto her light face. She reached into the pocket of her navy blue South Pole bubble jacket and pulled out a pair of black wool gloves and put them on her hands. B had a pair of leather gloves that was worn in the middle. You could tell he’d used them an awful lot.

  Swag did have a security system. He had an ADT sign sitting right in his front yard that LaShawn missed on her initial visit. B led LaShawn around to the back of Swag’s house. He saw the network interface device that connected his phone wires. He was able to unscrew the screws on the network interface device, and disconnect the wires for the telephone system that alerted the security system of a break-in.

  Once the security system had been disarmed, LaShawn showed B a patio door that would lead them into the house. It was dark inside of the room where they gained entry. They remained in the dark room, in the cut, until they could assess how many people were there with them in the house. It was very quiet, so B thought it couldn’t have been that many people there. That was a good thing, less people meant less witnesses. Witnesses that would not be left behind.

  Ty had finished bagging up the coke Swag had left on the table. He had packed it away in a camera bag that held one of the video cameras that was needed for the video shoot. He was now making his sandwich, silently cursing at Swag for making them so late to something that was so important to their music company, when he heard something fall in one of the other rooms.

  “Aye! Yo, Swag, nigga, you a’ight?’ Ty called out.

  No sound followed.

  Ty put down the piece of turkey he had in his hand. His gut told him something wasn’t right. He turned around to the hole of B’s Glock staring him in the face.

  “My name ain’t Swag, nigga!” B said from behind his ski mask. “Run it!”

  “Run what? You must have me fucked up with another nigga!”

  “Nah, I ain’t got you fucked up, money. Run ya shit!”

  Ty’s neck was iced out with several chains with pendants swinging from them and his wrists and hands were blinging too. He didn’t know what move to make. He had been caught totally off guard. His gun was in his car, and his car was in Swag’s driveway. He thought about the knives lodged in the wooden block on the kitchen counter.

  B eyed the knives also. “Don’t even think about it, nigga! You’ll be talking to God by the time you reach for it.”

  “What you here for?” Ty asked.

  “We came to get everything y’all got, nigga! Tell him what we here for,” B said.

  LaShawn acted like she didn’t hear him. She wasn’t trying to have her voice identified. B just needed to tie Ty up, find Swag, tie him up, and they could go around the house and get what they needed and they could be out.

  Just as she walked over to B and started to whisper this in his ear, Swag came down and walked in on his own robbery. He didn’t bother to ask any questions. He simply pulled his gun, and shot at the person who had a gun pointed in his man’s face.

  “Aw shit, dawg!” Ty yelled, as B fell at his feet.

  “Man, fuck that! Who the fuck are these niggas?” Swag ran over to LaShawn and grabbed her up before she could run.

  Ty bent down and pulled B’s mask off his bleeding face. “I don’t know this nigga.” He stood up and kicked him to see if he was dead or alive. He wasn’t moving.

  “Yeah, well, we know this one,” Swag said, as he pulled the ski mask from over LaShawn’s face.

  LaShawn was shook and she was stuck. Her mother was going to have a heart attack behind this. Oh my God! What the hell am I supposed to do now?

  The flashing lights of the police cars set Swag’s normally quiet neighborhood on blast. He explained to the police officers that LaShawn and B had attempted to rob his home and that he used his registered weapon to halt them, mentioning the ski masks and strange vehicle on the scene, to corroborate his story.

  But before the cops had arrived, Swag had sent Ty ahead to the video shoot with everybody’s pay. He didn’t want the entire night to be a disaster.

  He would still have to be processed for the murder, but with the connections he had, he more than likely would not see the inside of a jail cell.

  Misha spotted Ty. It looked as if he was handing out envelopes to the cast and crewmembers on the set. She ran up to him wanting to know where Swag was. She had done the entire video without Swag being there and was past worried. He had not answered one of her calls, and that wasn’t like him.

  “Ty, where’s Swag?”

  “Ask ya girl,” he said, looking in Whakelah’s direction.

  “Whakelah?” Misha asked, looking confused.

  “Tell her, or I’ll tell her,” Ty said.

  Whakelah didn’t really know what to tell Misha. She didn’t know where Swag was. She had been trying to find out just as well as Misha was. “I . . . I don’t know where he is, Ty,” Whakelah said.

  “What were you calling me for earlier? To see if we had left the house, so you could send ya peoples to come and rob your girlfriend’s man?” Ty looked at Misha with suspicion. “Or maybe you was in on it too, Misha.”

  “In on what?” Misha looked from Whakelah to Ty.

  “She didn’t know anything about it!” Whakelah blurted out.

  “Oh, but now I see, you did!”

  “Please, somebody tell me where Swag is?” Misha said, now on the verge of tears.

  Ty was glad to know Misha didn’t have anything to do with setting up his man, Swag really had true feelings for her, and that would have really fucked his man up.

  “Swag and ya girl LaShawn is in jail!” Ty screwed his face at Whakelah.

  “In jail?”

  “Tell Misha what you know, Whakelah,” Ty demanded. He didn’t know how much Whakelah knew, but he wanted to know. He was considering fucking with her, but if she was on some larceny shit like this, he was leaving her right where she stood.

  Whakelah cleansed he
r soul, telling Misha everything she knew. She even told Misha that LaShawn had her sleep with B. She told Misha how sorry she was, that she too had a moment of jealousy over all of the goodness coming into Misha’s life. She told Misha that she loved her as a best friend, and that she was grateful for all of the things she had done for her, no matter what Misha thought of her afterward.

  BEHIND THESE WALLS

  The lights from the camera were bright as the cameraman adjusted the power of the glare. The warden had allowed Whakelah and the crew from her reality television show, Keepin’ It Real, to come in and interview one of their inmates. Whakelah sat face to face with this prisoner in hopes of deterring people who watched her show from suffering the same fate.

  As soon as Ty heard Whakelah’s explanation for keeping quiet about the robbery, he had to admit, he believed her. He was already interested in expanding his record company into other media outlets, so he thought, Why give the production company in Atlanta the chance at Whakelah’s show, when he and Swag could very well do it themselves?

  Misha was smiling as she held onto Swag’s waist. She was happy to be at his side and planned on being never without him again. Misha was so relieved when Swag had called to tell her that the police had released him after what had gone down at his crib. They had shot the cameo scenes the next day, and he was still able to make it into DiViNCi’s music video. Thanks to the video editor, he looked like he was never missing.

  Swag was there at the prison because he had to be, he was one of the executive producers of Keepin’ It Real, and was checking on his investment.

  Whakelah was now living her dream, a dream that not many believed in. But she believed, and she never stopped believing. She made it a point to tell all of her viewers in each episode before closing out her show to keep believing in their dreams and to keep striving to accomplish their goals no matter how unattainable they may seem.